Wanted: Transputer TRAM schematics

[roz303]

I've come across my very own Transputer T800, and would like to bring it to life. Thankfully it doesn't require much to get started; however, I think it would help to have a TRAM schematic as a point of reference. Let me know if you have one. Thank you very much!

 

[NeXT]

I'm curious what the issue currently is.

 

[Megatron-uk]

Hi roz303!

Welcome to the very small club of Transputer owners There's not many people left with working systems now.

The best points of reference for anything Transputer related are:

http://www.transputer.net/
http://www.classiccmp.org/transputer/

...as well as http://www.geekdot.com - this guy is even producing new TRAM boards!

Myself I have a small collection of Transputers - a Transtech TMB04 ISA interface card (4 TRAM slots, 1x T805 onboard and 12x 30pin simm slots), as well as two INMOS IMS-B426 TRAM's (T805, 4MB DRAM) and a weird dual-width TRAM with a T414 and 4 SIPP memory sticks - no-one seems able to identify that one and unfortunately the SIPP memory seems faulty according to ispy!

I'm currently working on a modern interface driver for Linux (I've updated the ancient kernel driver from back in the 2.x.x days to work with Linux 3.x.x and above) as well as re-writing some of the very old tools that were used back in the early 90's (ispy, mtest... and hopefully the Helios IO server) in Python so we can use these things again on slightly more modern hosts.

My small contribution to the Transputer world is here: http://github.com/megatron-uk

 

[antiquekid3]

I'll have to chime in later when I have more time, but I am another Transputer owner, with a 64-node array of T805s in a large box with a 486 host running MS-DOS 6.22. I'd love to get this interfaced to something more modern and start doing some real development with it, but I think that'll be a project for perhaps another decade...

I also have a handful of TRAMs, as well as some ISA interface cards that aren't part of the 64-node array. The array needs some reverse-engineering to figure out how the C004 switches connect the T805s. There's a configuration program, but upon running it, I only seem to get 63 of the 64 to show up with ispy. Hmm...

 

[roz303]

Hi roz303!

Welcome to the very small club of Transputer owners There's not many people left with working systems now.

The best points of reference for anything Transputer related are:

http://www.transputer.net/
http://www.classiccmp.org/transputer/

...as well as http://www.geekdot.com - this guy is even producing new TRAM boards!

Myself I have a small collection of Transputers - a Transtech TMB04 ISA interface card (4 TRAM slots, 1x T805 onboard and 12x 30pin simm slots), as well as two INMOS IMS-B426 TRAM's (T805, 4MB DRAM) and a weird dual-width TRAM with a T414 and 4 SIPP memory sticks - no-one seems able to identify that one and unfortunately the SIPP memory seems faulty according to ispy!

I'm currently working on a modern interface driver for Linux (I've updated the ancient kernel driver from back in the 2.x.x days to work with Linux 3.x.x and above) as well as re-writing some of the very old tools that were used back in the early 90's (ispy, mtest... and hopefully the Helios IO server) in Python so we can use these things again on slightly more modern hosts.

My small contribution to the Transputer world is here: http://github.com/megatron-uk

Thanks, glad to be in the club! I contacted the owner of geekdot.com, and not only is he producing new TRAMs, but after discussing one of his i2c-transputer interface projects, it turns out all it'd take to build a modern little transputer system would be his TRAM, an INMOS C011, an i2c to 8 bit parallel port expander, and an i2c to USB interface (could be an arduino, which would simplify software utilities!). How's THAT for a modern Transputer system? :D

Of course then, one would have to re-write most of the utilities to talk to the transputer... That makes me think, though: If I've got a transputer occam compiler running in DOSbox, would that compiler produce code that'd only work with transputer hardware (host boards and associated communication protocols), or would I/O code produced by the compiler perform I/O over the links and assume the hardware is going to handle the grunt-work of talking to the host? I'd assume the latter would be the case, considering the wide assortment of host interfaces there was....

 

[roz303]

I'll have to chime in later when I have more time, but I am another Transputer owner, with a 64-node array of T805s in a large box with a 486 host running MS-DOS 6.22. I'd love to get this interfaced to something more modern and start doing some real development with it, but I think that'll be a project for perhaps another decade...

I also have a handful of TRAMs, as well as some ISA interface cards that aren't part of the 64-node array. The array needs some reverse-engineering to figure out how the C004 switches connect the T805s. There's a configuration program, but upon running it, I only seem to get 63 of the 64 to show up with ispy. Hmm...

WOW! That's an impressive system - and it still runs (almost) perfectly? Wow... Feel free to send some pictures of the array when you get a chance!