🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jun5.231450.25856@digi.lonestar.org>, crichmon@digi.lonestar.org (Charles Richmond) writes:
|> A friend of mine in college told me about the Sigma 9 computer
|> that he used at his previous university.  He said it was great
|> for interactive use.  I believe that the computer was designed
|> by Scientific Data Systems (SDS).  Later this company sold
|> out to Xerox and became Xerox Data Systems (XDS).  I would
|> like to know more about the hardware and software of the Sigma 9
|> and perhaps its sibling, the Sigma 7.  Particularly:

I was a user of a Sigma 6 (single processor Sigma 9) in the 70's at Northern
Arizona University.  Some of my recollections may be incorrect, so others are
welcome to correct them.  The machine was decommisioned in 1981, purchased in
1967-1968 (or so), and was worth more for the gold in the circuits than was paid
for it originally.

|>   1) How many registers did the machines have, and did any
|>      have special uses?

16 general purpose registers, with r0 wired to zero.

The calling convention dedicated r15 to return address - I don't remember the
rest.

|>   2) What was the instruction set like?  (Maybe someone has
|>      a reference card or such and can provide a complete
|>      list of the numeric opcodes)

Typical CISC of the era - included byte translation instructions, and an
`execute' instruction.

My manual set has disappeared into the mists of time, I fear.

|>   3) Was this a 32-bit machine?

Oddly enough, I remember this as a 36 bit machine, but this may be an artifact of
everything being documented in octal.

|>   4) What high level languages were available for these machines?

I remember FORTRAN and SNOBOL.  Seems that the snobol was from Toronto.

There might have been a BASIC interpreter.

System calls were all named M$<something>, like M$READ and M$WRITE.

The assembler was a macro aqssembler, and was quite powerful.

The supplied editor is one of the best line-oriented editors I ever used, with
very, very powerful string matching and replacement syntax.  Almost as powerful as GNU emacs in that single regard.

|>   5) What operating system was used and how does it compare to
|>      current systems such as Unix?

There were several - the only one I used was CP-V (pronounced cee-pee-five).

It was originally a batch-only machine.

|>   6) What technology was used in the hardware?  (IC's, transistors,
|>      tubes, TTL, RTL, etc.)

transistors and cores.

Ours had 128K of core, and might have had a second CPU (an upgrade option
for the sigma 6, which made it identical to the sigma 9).  It supported
40 interactive users pretty well, but response time went out the door
above 50 users.

|>   7) Any interesting stories related to these machines?

The backing store was a 20MB hard disk that was a 3 foot diameter disk of
aluminum, 2 inches thick, that was spun by a motor using wall power, and that
turned the generator for the system power.  Cleaned the power supply, and
provided enough power to shut down the machine cleanly when there was a power
failure.  All that, and disk storage, too!

On power failure (or normal shutdown), CP-V would light up the front panel, and
play the "Star Spangled Banner".

A lot of the software was named for animals, although I can't remember an
example.  The debugger was named "ddt". [CP-6 (*NOT* CP-VI), for the Honeywell
DPS-8 machines, expanded on the "animal name" tradition]

Some of the early manuals were rather `racey' and sexist, with comments about
putting processes (which were female, so they could `birth' children) to bed.

|>   8) Does anyone still use these machines, or clones of them?

I wouldn't be surprised if one or two still were in use - they were very
reliable, and not too obnoxious, software wise.  The system software was bullet
proof, and was on release F01, which would be the first patch after the sixth
major release (Alpha would have been A00).

Clones?  I doubt it.

|>   9) Where would one go to find hardware manuals or even junked
|>      machines of this family?

Call Honeywell.  Also, there are a lot of old CP-Ver's out there.

I doubt much hardware survives, due to the gold salvage value.

Ah, nostalgia - I hope I didn't misremember too much.
-- 
Kirk Hays - NRA Life.
Message for Timothy Fay - "Do not eat/wear/exploit things you will not kill."