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PERQ-1 "barn find" -- first boot in 24 years...

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Skeezics

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Dec 21, 2015, 3:44:06 AM12/21/15
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About a year ago a friend in Georgia came across a PERQ at a garage sale. He very graciously collected it for me, and helped get the various bits of it packed and shipped. The chassis, being the largest, heaviest and most irreplaceable part (Shugart SA4000-series drives are impossible to find anymore) took the greatest care and expense to have shipped. But, with perseverance, I managed to finally save up the pennies and make the arrangements with a freight company to pack and ship it to Oregon.

After a careful disassembly, cleaning and inspection, I captured the first attempt at powering up the machine on video: https://youtu.be/GdajQh0rC4o

If you've been curious (or are feeling reminiscent) to see and hear a PERQ-1 boot up, I don't know that there are many other videos on the web... This was my first YouTube effort, and it was a somewhat hastily put together in my dining room so the lighting and audio aren't stellar. I hope to capture a few more (better quality) videos of the machine running demos and games, and show off the PERQ for a new generation... or at least the half a dozen of you out there that might still care about this nifty old machine! :-)


--
s. boondoggle
perq fanatic

Rob Jarratt

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Dec 24, 2015, 10:20:13 AM12/24/15
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"Skeezics" wrote in message
news:dde081de-72e4-4269...@googlegroups.com...
That is great to see, thanks for sharing. I hope one day to find a PERQ in
the UK.

Regards

Rob

Bob Campbell

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Feb 7, 2016, 2:41:20 PM2/7/16
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Wow, very cool. Is that a PERQ 1? It is exactly the same model that
I used in the early 80s. We used the InTran software on it, and it
was connected to a Xerox 9700 laser printer. We used it to create
business forms, logos and fonts for our print shop.

We also played a LOT of chess and pool on it.

BTW, after your video, the next one that came on you tube was a demo
of the Sapphire window manager, running the same PERQ model. It can
be seen at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHELJqtxLmM

Thanks for the memories, and congratulations on getting such a
pristine example of a PERQ shipped across the country.

Bob


Skeezics

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Feb 8, 2016, 3:42:27 PM2/8/16
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On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 11:41:20 AM UTC-8, Bob Campbell wrote:

>
> Wow, very cool. Is that a PERQ 1? It is exactly the same model that
> I used in the early 80s. We used the InTran software on it, and it
> was connected to a Xerox 9700 laser printer. We used it to create
> business forms, logos and fonts for our print shop.
>

Yes, it's a PERQ-1A (has the 16K CPU) with 1MB and a 24MB disk. Based on serial number it's from late '81/early '82, though it received most of the ECOs to bring it up-to-date (it runs the new Z80 code and POS G). Other than a pretty serious dust accumulation in the power supply and a dodgy varistor, it was in beautiful condition.

There is a terrific video of the Intran software running on a landscape PERQ T2 floating around the web. I think it's available through the Digibarn museum web site? It looks like a VHS transfer from around 1984-85 and really shows off the capabilites of Metaform and the PERQ. Great stuff considering DTP was really still quite new then...

Digibarn also has a full set of Intran floppies. I've been nagging at them over the years to get those archived and copied to Bitsavers, because someday I will get my T2 running again and would LOVE to have a working copy of Metaform to play with. (I don't know if the various bits and pieces I've collected amount to a complete distribution or not.)

> We also played a LOT of chess and pool on it.

I've got a copy of chess, and it's pretty good! There's also PERQman, of course. There were several other PERQ games floating around, and I've been trying to gather them up and get them to run again. There's a Pente, Tetris, Asteroids ("Rasteroids" :-) and some others that I remember but can't find, like a Galaxians (not quite finished when I played it) and a rudimentary Space Invaders... not that most people back then would spend $30K on a machine to play arcade games, but they did show off the graphics capabilities quite nicely. :-)

> BTW, after your video, the next one that came on you tube was a demo
> of the Sapphire window manager, running the same PERQ model. It can
> be seen at
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHELJqtxLmM
>

Yes! Brad Meyers has posted a bunch of great videos from that era, many of which feature the PERQ. In addition to SAPPHIRE, he wrote most of the games and demos and other nifty display hacks. I've been working on a long-overdue cleanup and reorganization of my server room at home, trying to make space for the new PERQ so that I can post some more in-depth videos and show some of that software in action. Watch this space! :-)

> Thanks for the memories, and congratulations on getting such a
> pristine example of a PERQ shipped across the country.

Thank you for posting! I love that there are still people in the world who remember the PERQ (fondly, or otherwise)...

Cheers,

-- Chris

Bob Campbell

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Feb 9, 2016, 12:03:28 AM2/9/16
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On Mon, 8 Feb 2016 12:42:27 -0800 (PST), Skeezics
<skee...@gmail.com> wrote:


>There is a terrific video of the Intran software running on a landscape PERQ T2 floating around the web. I think it's available through the Digibarn museum web site? It looks like a VHS transfer from around 1984-85 and really shows off the capabilites of Metaform and the PERQ. Great stuff considering DTP was really still quite new then...

Yes, I have seen that video. It is on Digibarn.

Our PERQ had the landscape display, but I'm pretty sure it was T1.
It had the brown case with the 4 cooling slots on the bottom front and
the horizontal 8" floppy. I also remember the 24" hard drive mounted
on the left side of the chassis, exactly as in your video.

It also had the 4 button puck and the digitizer pad. It was connected
via ethernet to the Xerox 9700 printer. The 9700 was a marvel unto
itself in 1982. 2 pages per second, non stop printing. You could do
1.5 million pages per month with normal maintenance.

>Digibarn also has a full set of Intran floppies. I've been nagging at them over the years to get those archived and copied to Bitsavers, because someday I will get my T2 running again and would LOVE to have a working copy of Metaform to play with. (I don't know if the various bits and pieces I've collected amount to a complete distribution or not.)

That would be great. Even better would be to get them running on the
emulator! Although just seeing Scavenger and chess running again
after 35 years is astonishing.

>I've got a copy of chess, and it's pretty good! There's also PERQman, of course. There were several other PERQ games floating around, and I've been trying to gather them up and get them to run again. There's a Pente, Tetris, Asteroids ("Rasteroids" :-) and some others that I remember but can't find, like a Galaxians (not quite finished when I played it) and a rudimentary Space Invaders... not that most people back then would spend $30K on a machine to play arcade games, but they did show off the graphics capabilities quite nicely. :-)

Yes, I have chess, its included with the emulator. It also has
PERQman, and Pente. But I can't figure out Pente. Either it crashes
the emulator, or I don't know what I'm doing.

Still looking for the pool game. I don't know if it came with the
InTran software or what. It was VERY good.

>Yes! Brad Meyers has posted a bunch of great videos from that era, many of which feature the PERQ. In addition to SAPPHIRE, he wrote most of the games and demos and other nifty display hacks. I've been working on a long-overdue cleanup and reorganization of my server room at home, trying to make space for the new PERQ so that I can post some more in-depth videos and show some of that software in action. Watch this space! :-)

Yes, I saw some other Brad Myers videos also. He was quite active in
those days.

>Thank you for posting! I love that there are still people in the world who remember the PERQ (fondly, or otherwise)...

I feel the same way. I thought I was the only person in the world
who knew what a PERQ was. Discoverning this newsgroup and Digibarn
were real eye openers.

I mainly remember being astonished at how cool the PERQ was, and the
InTran software. Then the InTran software was purchased by Xerox (I
believe) and it ran on other hardware platforms. But I did a LOT of
work with InTran on the PERQ.

Bob


Skeezics

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Feb 9, 2016, 4:58:11 PM2/9/16
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On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 9:03:28 PM UTC-8, Bob Campbell wrote:
>
> Our PERQ had the landscape display, but I'm pretty sure it was T1.
> It had the brown case with the 4 cooling slots on the bottom front and
> the horizontal 8" floppy. I also remember the 24" hard drive mounted
> on the left side of the chassis, exactly as in your video.
>

There were a limited number of PERQ-1s with landscape displays -- that was a rare configuration! The landscape screen was roughly coincident with the release of the PERQ-2 and POS G, when they updated the OS and microcode to support both display types. PERQemu doesn't yet support that, but it's definitely on the list!

> It also had the 4 button puck and the digitizer pad. It was connected
> via ethernet to the Xerox 9700 printer. The 9700 was a marvel unto
> itself in 1982. 2 pages per second, non stop printing. You could do
> 1.5 million pages per month with normal maintenance.
>

I remember the 9700, and its little sibling (the 4700?) from CMU in the early '80s... I always imagined they just fed entire trees in one end and gathered up finished books on the other end. That thing was scary fast. The smaller model was driven by an Alto, and it was still quick - maybe 40pps? Memory fails on the specifics, but I remember being able to send a large print job to the spooler then walk directly to the printer room to pick up the output, where the job would be finished, stapled, and waiting in the output tray in no time flat. Amazing.

> >Digibarn also has a full set of Intran floppies. I've been nagging at them over the years to get those archived and copied to Bitsavers, because someday I will get my T2 running again and would LOVE to have a working copy of Metaform to play with. (I don't know if the various bits and pieces I've collected amount to a complete distribution or not.)
>
> That would be great. Even better would be to get them running on the
> emulator! Although just seeing Scavenger and chess running again
> after 35 years is astonishing.

Okay, knowing that *someone* out there is actually playing with the emulator makes my heart glad. :-) Clearly I need to get going on the next release -- new RasterOp support means it'll be possible to run early versions of PNX and Accent, in addition to POS! It'll be "Real Soon Now," honest. :-)

>
> Yes, I have chess, its included with the emulator. It also has
> PERQman, and Pente. But I can't figure out Pente. Either it crashes
> the emulator, or I don't know what I'm doing.

I'll take a look at Pente... whether or not it is faithful to the game itself concerns me less than it crashing the emulator. Unless, of course, it also crashes on the PERQ itself, in which case the emulator is behaving correctly! We strive for 100% bug compatibility. :-)

> Still looking for the pool game. I don't know if it came with the
> InTran software or what. It was VERY good.

I'll have to be on the lookout for that! :-)

...
> I feel the same way. I thought I was the only person in the world
> who knew what a PERQ was. Discoverning this newsgroup and Digibarn
> were real eye openers.

There are some other museums with PERQs, and a few collectors that still have them. But they are definitely getting scarce, and I'm not sure how many still run. :-/ Josh's work on the emulator really has helped to bring it back from total obscurity, and I've noticed a fairly steady increase over the last 10-15 years in mentions and references on the web.

> I mainly remember being astonished at how cool the PERQ was, and the
> InTran software. Then the InTran software was purchased by Xerox (I
> believe) and it ran on other hardware platforms. But I did a LOT of
> work with InTran on the PERQ.
>

I don't suppose you have any old photos, or output samples of the work you produced back then? That'd be pretty neat. I remember doing simple page layout and technical writing on first generation Macs with those tiny screens... working on a big 1280x1024 PERQ must have been grand. :-)

Cheers,

-- Chris

Bob Campbell

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Feb 9, 2016, 9:59:07 PM2/9/16
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On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 13:58:10 -0800 (PST), Skeezics
<skee...@gmail.com> wrote:


>I remember the 9700, and its little sibling (the 4700?) from CMU in the early '80s... I always imagined they just fed entire trees in one end and gathered up finished books on the other end. That thing was scary fast. The smaller model was driven by an Alto, and it was still quick - maybe 40pps? Memory fails on the specifics, but I remember being able to send a large print job to the spooler then walk directly to the printer room to pick up the output, where the job would be finished, stapled, and waiting in the output tray in no time flat. Amazing.

The slower version of the 9700 was the 8700. It was literally just a
slowed down 9700. The Xerox techs told me that it was a slower model,
so it would need less maintenance each month and Xerox could therefore
charge less for it. It looked exactly like the 9700.

Later, there were completely different models. The 4050 and the 4090.
These were completely different hardware than the 9700/8700, but were
software compatible of course.

>I'll take a look at Pente... whether or not it is faithful to the game itself concerns me less than it crashing the emulator. Unless, of course, it also crashes on the PERQ itself, in which case the emulator is behaving correctly! We strive for 100% bug compatibility. :-)

OK, I see what the problem with Pente is. It is probably working
fine, the problem is that the d6.phd hard disk image that it is on has
a problem. When it boots, there is no PERQ hardware cursor. Even
chess on this drive does not work.

All I see is the + cursor from the emulator. There is no arrow
pointing "North West" - the actual PERQ cursor. Double clicking does
not bring up the pop-up menu as it does on the f1.phd image.

Pente is located in the sys:user>bl directory on the d6.phd. I don't
see it on the f1.phd drive. That drive works fine, has the PERQ
cursor and chess runs fine on it.

>I don't suppose you have any old photos, or output samples of the work you produced back then? That'd be pretty neat. I remember doing simple page layout and technical writing on first generation Macs with those tiny screens... working on a big 1280x1024 PERQ must have been grand. :-)

No, I don't have any pictures. No one carried cameras with them at
all times in those days :-)

Actually, I do have an output sample. I made a cassette "cover" for
the case for a mix tape I made. Its not much - just some random
circles and squares with various shadings and such. It looks fairly
primitive now, but it was absolutely SOTA in 1982 (or whenever it was
that I made it).

Bob

Nigel Williams

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Feb 28, 2016, 3:54:59 AM2/28/16
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On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 8:58:11 AM UTC+11, Skeezics wrote:
> There were a limited number of PERQ-1s with landscape displays -- that was a rare configuration!

I played with this model sometime in the early 1980s. Can anyone remember the demo system had a window manager where when you closed a window a small figurine (little caveman) would run out and push the window off the screen? also when the system was busy doing something a large bumblebee flew around the screen?

I've looked at various demos but the above detail seems to be missing; I'd be glad to discover if the software still exists.

thanks.

Bob Campbell

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Mar 1, 2016, 9:41:22 AM3/1/16
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On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 00:54:59 -0800 (PST), Nigel Williams
<n...@retrocomputingtasmania.com> wrote:


>I played with this model sometime in the early 1980s. Can anyone remember the demo system had a window manager where when you closed a window a small figurine (little caveman) would run out and push the window off the screen? also when the system was busy doing something a large bumblebee flew around the screen?
>
>I've looked at various demos but the above detail seems to be missing; I'd be glad to discover if the software still exists.

I don't remember the caveman pushing the screen, but I do remember the
busy bee. The bee is one of the standard cursors that came with the
system.

There is an PERQ emulator available. It can be found at
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/projects/PERQemu/index.html

I have it here, and it works very well. It is loads of fun to play
with.

Bob


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