Re: Intel 310 stuff

[William Beech]

Dave/Matt,

I have also CC'ed this to the MDS group.

Okay.  I would be glad to share the software we have here for the Intel
310 to get you working.  I have an Intel 310 that I had working a few
years ago that I want to get back up.  I need an idea of the board set
you have in the 310.  iSBC numbers or pictures of the top of the boards
will do?  And also the hard drives, floppy drives and tape drives that
are present?  Do you have the PDP8Online HD emulator?

Bill

On 3/17/2025 8:08 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On 3/14/25 15:42, William Beech wrote:
>> I have had luck with the floppy disk images I have as well as the
>> hard disk images I have from several Intel 310's.  I have had one of
>> my Intel 310's operational in the recent past using a PDP8Online HD
>> emulator.
>
>   Hi Bill, I'm sorry for the delayed reply.  I've CC'd Matt Cauvel,
> who is working on the 310 here.
>
>> We have a group who are working with the Intel Intellec and MDS
>> systems.  I was the one with the Intel 310's and 320's I wish to get
>> running again.  While I have a 310 running, I don't have the
>> networking software for it.  I have the hardware we used for ethernet.
>
>   Nice.  We have a Series IV at LSSM as well; it's functional
> standalone, but we've gotten a pod and board set for mcs51 that we are
> having trouble getting running.  We've not really dug into that yet.
>
>   I used a Series IV setup with 80286 support at work in the 1980s.  I
> really liked that system and have been looking forward to doing more
> with the IV at LSSM.  Ideally I'd like to set up an end-to-end
> example, complete with a target board, with an 8051 to demonstrate
> embedded development, emulation, and debugging for that architecture.
>
>> When I went to work as a computer engineer with the US Army, we were
>> using Intel 310's as servers and Zenith 248's as clients.  It was a
>> fun time!  And one of the 310's I bought 10 years ago was one of the
>> servers in our command HQ and contained PII on myself and many I
>> worked with at that time (scary).
>
>   Wow!
>
>> I have the floppy disk images for Intel 310 Xenix 3.0 Basic System,
>> Extended System and Diagnostics in IMG and DMK format.  I have HD
>> emulator images for Intel 310 and 320 Xenix 3.5.  Our group also have
>> manuals on many 310 and 320 boards.
>
>   That sounds great.  I'd love to get some of those files from you if
> possible.
>
>> What boards (iSBC numbers, not PBA numbers, please) are in your
>> system? Do you have an HD emulator? What tape drive?  What floppy disk?
>>
>> What can I do to help you in your en devour?
>
>   I'll turn this part over to Matt (CC'd) for his input.  It's his
> project, I'm just trying to facilitate wherever possible.  But yes, we
> do have one of Dave Gesswein's emulators.  We can use that as a
> stepping stone, but in general we don't emulate anything at LSSM
> (that's part of our mission), so we'll try to get a functioning real
> disk drive in there at some point.
>
>            Thanks
>            -Dave
>

[William Beech]

Matt,

I used the HD emulator to image several Intel 310 HDs I and others in
the group held.  I used those images on the HD emulator to bring the
Intel 310 up.  One of the others in the group used the floppy disk
images you reference to make a clean install of Xenix V 3.0 on another
HD and imaged that HD.

You have to remember I am a retired Computer Engineer.  Here I will
begin picking nits!  I have many of these boards here and have used many
of them.  I want to fully understand your configuration.  It would
probable help if you listed all the 310 boards you hold.

I have used iSBC-286/10s and -286/12s in the Intel 310.  I have used
EPROMs on these boards but never RAM.  That was always on separate
memory card(s), iSBC-028CX/EX, iSBC-056CX/EX, iSBC-012CX/EX,
iSBC-024CX/EX, iSBC-048CX/EX, etc.  Are you using static RAMs on these
processor boards or additional RAM boards?

I have iSBC-214s and iSBC-215A, B, and Gs.  The 215Gs have iSBX-217 and
iSBC-218 boards for the tape drive and floppy. The iSBC-214 has all
three controllers on the one board.  I have never seen a G version of
the iSBC-214.  I have seen A, B, D, and G models of the iSBC-215.  So I
am confused with iSBC-214G!

Don't worry about the ethernet stuff.  You have the old controller,
iSBC-550 pair and the new iSBC-552 single board controller.  I have only
used the iSBC-552 board.  You will only need the iSBC-552.  I am still
trying to find the OpenNet and TCP/IP software we used on the 310s and
320s.  I suspect I have the software on one of the USR2 partitions on
the disk images I have.

All of the Intel 310s and SYP-311s I got had good power supplies. Both
my Intel 320s had bad power supplies.  It cost a bunch to replace one
320 PS.

I would recommend that you use the HD emulator rather than an actual HD
to restore the system.  I understand you have one of Dave's PDP8Online
emulators like I used to get my 310 up.  The old MFM drives just are
problems waiting to happen!

So you have the standard tape drive and the 1.2 MB floppy drive. What
shape are the rubber wheels in the tape drive in?  Lot of problems
there, as well.

With 4 Maxtor XT-1140 disks, that was nearly 1/2 GB of storage.  I had
one system with two large SMD drives that gave us several GB of data
storage.  With the OpenNet software, we had desktop access to all of that.

My plan here is to mount the HD emulator in a SYP-311.  Then I can share
the HD images with either an Intel 310 or an Intel 320 but moving a
couple of cords.  I will put all three in a relay rack. You can probably
just use one 310 chassis for all of it.  The 310 has limited board
slots, so that was a limiting factor.

Bill

On 3/17/2025 8:34 PM, Matt Cauvel wrote:
> Hi Bill! Matt Cauvel here, I've been working on our System 310.
> Unfortunately I've been stuck fighting with floppy image formats for
> the last month, we have the Xenix 3.0 boot disk booting but I must
> still have something wrong with the format because /mksys immediately
> falls on its face with a list of missing files/commands. I suspect
> you're referring the same images that are up on BitSavers(?), one copy
> in DMK and one in raw... could I ask what tool(s) you used to write
> those down to media?
>
> This is the hardware we have:
>
>  - iSBC 286/10 CPU Board - '286, 1MB RAM
>  - iSBC 214G Peripheral Controller
>  - iSBC 550 Ethernet Controller (Board Pair)
>  - iSBC 522 Ethernet Controller
>
> I have board sets from three systems and a spare chassis with a dead
> power supply. We also have a SYP311 disk expansion chassis. The System
> 310 had a single 140MB Maxtor XT-1140 disk and the expansion chassis
> had three of the same drive, unfortunately something appears to have
> damaged *all* of those disks, they're all acting like the servo
> platter was degaussed and at least one has crashed its heads after
> smacking the spindle/stop. We have a good ST-412 on hand and a few
> other drives that should work.
>
> One half-height 96TPI DS/DD floppy, and one Archive Corp 5945C tape
> drive. I believe our 310 was originally sold as the "iMDX 460-140T"
> storage server package for use as an NDS-II network resource manager.
>
> Open to any thoughts, thanks! - Matt
>
>
> On 2025-03-17 16:01, Dave McGuire wrote:
>> Thanks Bill.  Yes, I mentioned below that we do have one of the
>> Gesswein boards. (I say it that way in case you missed some of my
>> other interspersed replies)
>>
>>   I didn't know there was a Google Group for these machines; I didn't
>> realize there were many out there.  I'm very happy to learn of this.
>>
>>                -Dave