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ND-10 (was Re: DMA is obsolete)

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

Followups directed to: alt.folklore.computers

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MitchAlsup1 wrote:
>> It is more like the Peripheral Processors of CDC 6600 that run
>> ISA of a CDC 6600 without as much fancy execution in periphery.

I seem to remember the CDC 6000 series as 60 bit ISA, with the PPUs
being 12-bit. Is that wrong?

On 2025-05-03, Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> wrote:
> Similar timeframe: The ND10 minis were popular in process control, CERN 
> bought a brace of them.
>
> When they later came out with the larger ND100 and then ND500 machines, 
> the latter had a 100 (or 10?) as a front-end IO processor, partially 
> required because the original ND10 came with a very early version of 
> SINTRAN os which didn't have proper/complete IO support, so customers 
> had written machine code to handle it.
>
> The 500 wasn't machine code compatible, so all such IO routines then had 
> to run on the front-end processor.

My first job after I finished my apprentice years at the Copenhagen
University Computer Center, was at a bespoke engineering house mostly
interfacing specialty equipment at research labs. My first project there
(fall 1985) was writing a SINTRAN device driver for an A/D scanner with
a hundred or so channels. Debugging was fun. SINTARN was written in
PL-10, a programming language invented for the purpose. The command
language was unexpectedly smart, allowing many abbreviations for the
commands. I think the same abbreviation rules also applied to filenames.

The most memorable thing about the project, was that this was a very
early use of solid-state memory. The SRAM chips used, had a bug that
sometimes reverted bits to a state that they had earlier stored for a
prolonged amount of time. Really fun when tha affected memory word was
an allocation bitmap for memory pages or for disk sectors!!

I enjoyed the weeks I spent in Oslo learning the OS operation and system
build procedure.

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Thread

DMA is obsolete John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-04-26 16:19 +0000
  Re: DMA is obsolete Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> - 2025-04-26 16:28 +0000
    Re: DMA is obsolete Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> - 2025-04-26 19:28 +0200
    Re: DMA is obsolete Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2025-04-27 19:35 +0100
      Re: DMA is obsolete mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-04-27 20:49 +0000
        Re: DMA is obsolete scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-04-27 22:37 +0000
      Re: DMA is obsolete Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-28 01:20 +0000
  Re: DMA is obsolete scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-04-26 17:29 +0000
    Re: DMA is obsolete mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-04-26 19:25 +0000
      Re: DMA is obsolete scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-04-27 14:01 +0000
        Re: DMA is obsolete scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-04-27 16:12 +0000
      Re: DMA is obsolete scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-04-27 14:02 +0000
      Re: DMA is obsolete Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2025-04-27 20:13 +0100
        Re: DMA is obsolete mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-04-27 20:45 +0000
          Re: DMA is obsolete scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-04-27 22:44 +0000
      Re: DMA is obsolete cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-05-01 13:07 +0000
        Re: DMA is obsolete mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-01 22:03 +0000
          Re: DMA is obsolete cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-05-02 02:15 +0000
            Re: DMA is obsolete anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2025-05-02 05:34 +0000
              Re: DMA is obsolete cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-05-02 15:02 +0000
                Re: DMA is obsolete anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2025-05-03 06:11 +0000
                Re: DMA is obsolete Robert Finch <robfi680@gmail.com> - 2025-05-03 06:32 -0400
                Re: DMA is obsolete cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-05-03 13:33 +0000
                IP (was: DMA is obsolete) Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2025-05-03 10:50 -0400
                Re: IP (was: DMA is obsolete) Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2025-05-03 15:15 +0000
                Re: IP (was: DMA is obsolete) John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-05-03 15:46 +0000
                Re: IP (was: DMA is obsolete) cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-05-03 16:52 +0000
                Re: IP (was: DMA is obsolete) scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-05-03 21:31 +0000
                Re: IP Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2025-05-03 23:04 -0400
                Re: IP cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-05-04 09:56 +0000
                Re: IP Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2025-05-04 10:17 +0000
                Re: IP mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-04 18:16 +0000
                Re: IP Bill Findlay <findlaybill@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2025-05-04 19:37 +0100
                Re: IP Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-04 21:31 +0000
                Re: DMA is obsolete Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-04 06:44 +0000
                Re: DMA is obsolete scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-05-03 21:53 +0000
                Re: DMA is obsolete mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-03 23:02 +0000
                Re: DMA is obsolete cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-05-21 12:36 +0000
            Re: DMA is obsolete mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) - 2025-05-02 17:40 +0000
              Re: DMA is obsolete Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> - 2025-05-03 14:29 +0200
                ND-10 (was Re: DMA is obsolete) Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> - 2025-05-03 23:30 +0000
                Re: ND-10 (was Re: DMA is obsolete) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-04 02:10 +0000

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