worming through a C004?

[Dave McGuire]

Hi folks, I'm new at C004 use. If I have a network of Transputers
whose links are connected to a C004 in an unknown/undocumented
configuration, is there any program in the Transputer community that can
control the C004 to probe through all of its possible interconnections?
Or is there a better approach?

Thanks,
-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, President/Curator
Large Scale Systems Museum
New Kensington, PA

[Damien Carlier]

Hi Dave,

the parsytec reset scheme on the SuperCluster and the multicluster is a bit special, and makes it a bit complicated to use tools like ispy or rspy.
You may have noticed that the first iteration of Ispy will work after a boot and a config, but will crash on the second iteration, because parsytec cards don't respond to reset :)

[Dave McGuire]

Hi Damien! Yes, I noticed that. But I was asking in more of a
general sense about C004 usage. At the museum we also have a CSA
Superset.16, a small box with five ISA cards containing 16 T800s and two
C004s...and a very large nest of link wires...and no documentation as to
its topology. I was hoping to automate the mapping of this box.

But, just yesterday, a helper and I mapped all the link wires out
manually. Now I must learn how to program C004s to make a useful
configuration for this little CSA box. :)

[Andy Rabagliati]

On 7/11/23 16:29, Dave McGuire wrote:
>
>   Hi folks, I'm new at C004 use.  If I have a network of Transputers
> whose links are connected to a C004 in an unknown/undocumented
> configuration, is there any program in the Transputer community that can
> control the C004 to probe through all of its possible interconnections?
> Or is there a better approach?
>
>              Thanks,
>              -Dave
>

ispy - the transputer netwok tool - can read and program C004s.

Cheers, Andy!

[Dave McGuire]

On 9/24/23 09:26, Andy Rabagliati wrote:
>    Hi folks, I'm new at C004 use.  If I have a network of Transputers
>> whose links are connected to a C004 in an unknown/undocumented
>> configuration, is there any program in the Transputer community that
>> can control the C004 to probe through all of its possible
>> interconnections? Or is there a better approach?
>

> ispy - the transputer netwok tool - can read and program C004s.

Hi Andy, yes, I'm aware that some versions of ispy can do that. And
now that you mention it, that may be the best way to accomplish what I'd
like to do. The functionality that I was looking for was to worm out
and probe an entire network including arbitrarily-cascaded C004s, but
without directly reading the configurations of those C004s. I'm working
with a Parsytec Supercluster at LSSM, which has 39 C004s in an arbitrary
array.