HP/DEC/Compaq

Hi

This is absolutely awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-DpcvY4aBk

This is from the Norwegian Cooperative Nordic Simulator Center(NSC). They acquired the flight sim in 2007 (or so) and have been working on restoring it. It's _awesome_ that they have gotten this far. Imagine getting all that hardware going! It is three PDP-11 cooperating!

I found the Zip-drive somewhat anachronistic and amusing.

Read more here:
http://www.dc10.no/
and here:
http://www.toomuchfs.com/2mfs/showdoc.php?dsn=493

I wonder how the graphics is generated, it looks way better than what a PDP-11 could render.

I'm not affiliated, but I want to take a trip to norway now

Very cool.

I worked on a SGI Power Challenge based flight sim for the air force and had access to another flight sim in Ada on I think it was a Crimson or something. I was responsible for the avionics processors, MIL-STD 1553 bus and ARInc-429 bus.
Actually there was more hanging off the machines than there was in the machines... racks and racks of specialised stuff..


Where I work is near a tourist trap called Darling Harbour... There is a retired flight simulator from one of the air lines and anyone can go fly it for a price... Not cheap though if I recall.

There was also an amateur effort here locally, but I think it was PC based and real instruments wired to I/O cards..

THe out the windows displays are not as impressive as you might think and the was a simple projector system.. and lower resolution than you might expect...

I am also a licensed pilot with endorsements for low level work like crop dusting and cattle mustering.

R.

Pontus wrote: Hi

This is absolutely awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-DpcvY4aBk

This is from the Norwegian Cooperative Nordic Simulator Center(NSC). They acquired the flight sim in 2007 (or so) and have been working on restoring it. It's _awesome_ that they have gotten this far. Imagine getting all that hardware going! It is three PDP-11 cooperating!

I found the Zip-drive somewhat anachronistic and amusing.

Read more here:
http://www.dc10.no/
and here:
http://www.toomuchfs.com/2mfs/showdoc.php?dsn=493

I wonder how the graphics is generated, it looks way better than what a PDP-11 could render.

I'm not affiliated, but I want to take a trip to norway now

Thats cool. I have used PDP alot and since I am from defence industri and ATC we have also used them.

PDP11 did not have any graphic options what I can recall, it must be some custom equippent that does the video presentation.

In fact when we made the PPI for Heatrow and Gatwick in mid 80 it was PDP11/34 that worked as DRP(Display Refresh Processors) feeding the PPI DG(Display Generator) via two DL11 at sync 38400 baud.

When we manufactured the huge ATC systems that we once had we tried to by COTS systems once instead of making the processors and OS by ourself by using PDP and later VAX 11/780 but DEC forbid us to use them due to legal reason in case of a accident.

BTW, Pontus we should meet sometime I am very close to you since I am i Bålsta.

mila wrote: PDP11 did not have any graphic options what I can recall, it must be some custom equippent that does the video presentation.

The QBUS PDP-11 had pretty neat graphic options, both from DEC and third parties. The DEC one were raster graphics and where called VSV11. And I have a PDP-11/34 with a mysterious vector graphics called (I think) VMV something.

mila wrote: BTW, Pontus we should meet sometime I am very close to you since I am i Bålsta.

Definitely, I'll be more than happy do give you a tour of Updates premises and my own collection. December will be hectic for me, but we might squeeze something in. Or wait until next year.

That would be very fun.

December is always a pain but cant we just keep in touch whenever one of us have the time and then see if its possible?

Sure, no problem

I was actually wondering about the same (and commented about it on the video).

Hah! and they replied They pump position data out to MS FlightSim, what a weird wedding.

eMGee wrote: I've noticed that, too. For what particular reason did they prefer or the necessity to use a Zip-drive, I wonder.

I did my googling:

The WBC-3000 removable media disk, is a direct replacement for DEC and Pertec type 14 inch cartridge disk drives with fixed or removable storage capacity of 2 1/2 to 30MB. This product utilizes a Syquest EZ135 135MB removable cartridge disk drive or a removable hard disk drive canister.

I suppose that removable media was desired to emulate the feeling of removable cartridges. And at the time the WBC-3000 was designed, the ZIP was reasonable in cost and size. Today a SD-card would probably be good enough.

DEC generally used OEM systems to provide anything other than core minicomputer functionality, and peripheral customization for their IO buses. this changed around the early VAX when they started to mostly build their own disk drives. the Tape, and graphics were still OEM with customizations.

one such system was the GT100 (i believe that was it) used a 19 inch monochrome hooked up with a pdp-11 to do vector graphics for SUDS which ran on KL10's during the development of Jupiter (36) and Venus (32) systems. Jupiter was canceled, and Venus was the VAX 8600. GIGI graphics, VT125, VS2000, etc.. nothing really special in my recollection there. of course it was a big company. not everything happened in Marlboro.

I was long gone by '88.

In 1988 E&S and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) announced the availability of the VAXstation 8000, a color workstation featuring DEC's VAX computer and a very fast graphics system produced by E&S. Both corporations marketed the jointly produced item.

eMGee wrote: The reason I was so surprised to see a Zip-drive is because they're so dog-slow, even back in the day.

When Zip drives were introduced, SCSI versions were not dog slow. They blew away comparable CD-R technology in speed, although the capacity was lower. Parallel port Zip drives, OTOH, should never have existed, they were dog slow and gave Zip drives a bad name. Sometimes an order of magnitude difference in speed.