JohnButler - Edinburgh Computer History

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Until someone writes something interesting, here's John Butler's homepage

1. CS Display/Historical repository

This list was composed in 1995 and since then the repository has been expanded considerably. Basically, it's a collection of materials and papers representative of their era. Manuals, drives, media, chips, wafers, circuit boards, an early PC and an early BBC Micro, you name it.

Manuals
IBM 513, 514 reproducing (card) punch reference manual, 1966 plus a letter giving prices.
Heriot-Watt Algol Programming Notes, 1968. Personal property of jhb
Interdata Model 70 Users Manual, 1971. The Interdata was used as a departmental teaching machine in the mid-late '70s. Departmental (jhb)
Interdata Users Manual, 1973. Departmental (jhb)
PDP-9 (software) Monitor manual, 1968. Departmental (jhb)
DEC MUMPS programming language, 1971. I have no idea of the relevance of this. Departmental (jhb)
PDP-11 End-User product summary, 1977. The PDP-11 was the mini computer throughout the '70s and 80s. This University had scores of them.
EMAS System 4-75 primary subsystem reference manual, 1970. The EMAS multi-access system ran at Edinburgh on the ICL 4-75 then 2970 and 2980 and provided a successful service through the '70s and early-mid '80s.
An Introduction to IBM punched card data processing, ca. 1970.
IBM 1130 system summary, ca. 1970. The IBM 1130 was an early "mini" computer. The University had a few, notably in one of the Treasury-supported Statistics units in JCMB.
DEC PDP-11 processor handbook, ca. 1975 (originally jj)

2. Display/teaching hardware

A 3.5" hard disc (capacity ca. 200Mb), opened up and prepared for display, 1994. This came from a Sun LX workstation, donated for display.
An INMOS (now SGS/Thompson) T9000 Transputer, packaged, 1994. The T9000 is intended to replace the T8 transputer. Its main distinctive feature is its facilities to enable it to be used in large arrays in conjunction with a switching chip whose name escapes me.
Motorola PowerPC chip, 1994. This chip was designed to support a variety of convergent Mac/PC products. Its main distinctive feature is its low power consumption. It shuts portions of itself down when not in use.

3. Historical hardware

APM 68010/68451 daughter boards (2). The APM originally had a 68000 DIL processor chip as its main CPU. When we began to experiment with Virtual Memory a ride-on board was designed (Fred King?) which plugged into the 68000 DIL slot but which carried a 68010 (PGA) with two memory management units. We eventually made 60 or so of these. Date 1987 I believe.
A 68000 processor, 8MHz, 64-pin DIL package, 1980s
A 68451 MMU chip, PGA, late 1980s.
Unpopulated APM board, CSD134 (CPU) (2)
Unpopulated APM board, CSD136 (0.5Mb memory?)
Unpopulated APM board, CSD149 (framestore) (2)
Amdahl Processor board. Array of 41 square ?Fujitsu chips, all with nice brass heatsinks.

4. Calculators

Muldivo hand-cranked calculator
Friden electro-mechanical calculator (personal property (jhb))
Anita Electronic calculator (personal property (jhb))
Hewlett-Packard 32e pocket calculator