Texas Instruments 9900 news from Electronics Magazine

[+FarmerPotato]

I found these articles about Texas Instruments, or advertisements from TI, in Electronics Magazine. Hosted at worldradiohistory.com. Currently I am working through 1980-81 hoping to find something on E-Bus Systems. I'm checking all the occurrences of 990 or other keywords.  If you want to get an idea what business and industrial computing was like in the 80s, I recommend browsing the whole magazine. 

 

The TM990 boards come up many times for industrial settings.  I've included anything mentioning a TMS9900 processor, like the HP1702A GPIB bus controller, scopes and other test equipment. 

 

There is a great deal of coverage of speech synthesis in 1980. The TM990/306 speech board comes up many times.  And not just Texas Instruments.  There is a long article contributed by National Semiconductor. 

 

See also Texas Instruments news from Mini-Micro Systems Mag (1983)

 

 

[Electronics. Jan 03, 1980, p.182]
Ad for TI-59 application used in Winter Olympics scoring
Full page: Electronics-1980-01-03 p182 Calculator.pdf

Ad for LS630 error-detection-and-correction EDAC chipElectronics-1980-01-03 p184 LS630 EDAC.pdf
 

 

  

[Electronics. Jan 17, 1980, p.40]
Talking Products, voice response star at consumer show

Many companies products. Brief mention of speech synthesizer for 99/4 [Electronics, Jun 21, p.93]

 

[Electronics. Jan 17, 1980, pp.41-42]
Chip set captions TV programs for deaf

Full pages 40-42:Electronics-1980-01-17 Talking Products at Show.pdf

 

 

[Electronics. Jan 31, 1980, p.33]

Analog Devices Joins ATE race with benchtop unit

 

The potentially rich automated test equipment market these days has tempted a New England company to broaden its diet. Hybrid component maker Analog Devices Inc. of Norwood, Mass., is going after its first slice of the ATE pie with a benchtop linear lc tester slated for delivery at the beginning of May. The tester will be built around a 16-bit TMS 990/100M microcomputer from Texas Instruments Inc. and offer IEEE-488 bus control, two RS-232-C interfaces, and disk program store.

 

The potentially rich automated test equipment market these days has tempted a New England company to broaden its diet. Hybrid component maker Analog Devices Inc. of Norwood, Mass., is going after its first slice of the ATE pie with a benchtop linear IC tester slated for delivery at the beginning of May. The tester will be built around a 16-bit TMS 990/100M microcomputer from Texas Instruments Inc. and offer IEEE-488 bus control, two RS-232-C interfaces, and disk program store.

[Electronics. Jan 31, 1980, p. 129] 

Fast D/A converters to debut in April

ILC Data Device Corp. in Bohemia, N. Y., is designing a monolithic 14-bit digital-to-analog converter to incorporate into two superfast hybrid units that will be available in sample quantities in April this year.

One unit is an extremely low-glitch emitter-coupled-logic device that settles within 30 ns. The other is a TTL converter that has little glitch and settles in less than 100 ns. Both units are current-output converters with on-board references.

DDC is also developing a 14-bit multispeed and multichannel synchro/resolver-to-digital converter system based on Texas Instruments' 9900 16-bit microprocessor. The unit will have wide operating flexibility and will use DDC'S model 8585 analog-to-digital converter.

 

[Electronics, Jan 31, 1980, p.63] and [Electronics, Mar 27, 1980]
Ad for TI Microprocessor Pascal

 

Full page PDF: 
Electronics-1980-01-31 MP Pascal.pdf

 

 

 

[Electronics, Feb. 14, 1980, p. 40]

TI readies first standard product with megabit bubbles

The first standard product to use Texas Instruments Inc.'s megabit magnetic-bubble memory device is slated to roll out of the Dallas company this month. The TMS 990/211 module will employ up to six TIB 1000 bubble chips, providing 768 kilobytes of nonvolatile storage per card for use in TMS 990 microcomputer systems. The 211 board is the first in a series of 990-compatible modules planned to utilize the TI family of 256-K, 512-K, and 1-Mb bubble chips announced at Wescon last year [Electronics, Sept. 27, 1979, p. 37].

 

[Electronics, Feb. 14, 1980, p. 49]

Benchtop unit has flexible repertoire

 

That one-company product field of low-cost benchtop linear testers will soon pick up a new competitor. Analog Devices Inc. will join GenRad Inc., and it will do it with a unit that can test more types of devices more flexibly.

Known for its precision conversion products, the Norwood, Mass., company is entering the market for automated test equipment with its LTS 2000 benchtop tester [Electronics, Jan. 31, p. 33]. It is taking on ATE giant GenRad in an area it knows well, since it has long been testing its own linear integrated circuits.

The new benchtop tester uses a TMS 990/100A microprocessor, whereas GenRad's 1731 benchtop unit uses a Z80 [Electronics, March 29, 1979, p. 136]. The 16-bit processor, backed by 60 kilobytes of random-access memory into which the operating program is downloaded from a floppy disk, gives the LTS 2000 its capabilities.

*More tests.* For example, the unit can test analog-to-digital and d-a converters, something GenRad's tester cannot now do. By taking advantage of the 16-bit word of the TMS 990, it can test the converters to an accuracy of 12 bits (0.01%).

To configure the $25,900 tester for converter testing, the user slips out the linear test card that comes in its front drawer and replaces it with an optional $3,000 d-a card or $4,000 a-d card. Cards for logarithmic amplifiers, multipliers, and other components are on the drawing board now, and these too are parts the 1731 cannot test.

In effect, the LTS 2000 ups the ante in the low-cost benchtop tester field and has taken the industry by surprise. GenRad may be planning to upgrade the 1731, but it will not talk about its plans. Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. will neither confirm nor deny reports that it plans an entry.

Analog Devices uses the internal memory space, double that of the $22,800 1731, to ease system use through more flexible test sequences. The storage capacity also makes it possible to generate statistical analysis of the work performed.

The flexible test sequences are produced by stored programs that employ keys whose function is determined in software with appropriate labels displayed on a 40-character dot matrix. As the user works through the sequence-generation procedure, the keys' functions change, offering different choices of test operations at different steps.

What's more, the user can choose the order in which the LTS 2000 performs tests, thereby permitting early checking of what appear to be the failure-prone parameters. Limits for parameter values are typed in using a 30-character key pad when the program-generation procedure calls up the parameter name.

Once someone like a test-floor supervisor has generated a test program, it can then be stored on a 51/2-inch single-sided floppy disk. Alternatively, Analog Devices can supply such programs from its growing library. In any case, an untrained user can run a go/no-go test by pushing a single button.

If the device fails, the test results can be printed on an integral thermal printer and attached to the failed part. Also, the tester can sort devices into eight bins.

Analysis. Another feature is an integral statistical analysis program. Failure trends for, say, a lot run through the tester can be spotted by using the program to generate tables, histograms, or curves. Thse plots can be printed out on an optional 132-column printer or displayed on an optional cathode-ray tube terminal attached to the LTS 2000's two RS-232-C interfaces. Although it is intended primarily as a stand-alone tester, the new unit can work with a host computer, as well as with an automatic device handler. —Richard M. Comerford
 

[Electronics, Feb. 14, 1980, p. 185]
Ad for TMS2508
Electronics-1980-02-14 TMS2508.pdf

 

[Electronics, Feb. 28, 1980, p. 227]
Ad for SofTech Microsystems UCSD Pascal, supports 9900

 

[Electronics, Feb. 28, 1980, p. 39-40]

"Storage oscilloscope uses microprocessor to ease test chores"

Tektronix 7854 based on TMS9900

 

[Electronics, Mar 27, 1980]
Ad for TI Microprocessor Pascal

 

[Electronics, Mar 27, 1980, p. 84] and  [Electronics, Apr 10, 1980, p.84]

[Ads for TM990/306 Speech Module for $1280]

 

A microcomputer module that talks. From the leader. Texas Instruments.

 

In busy and visually cluttered industrial environments, speech is often the only effective means of communication. That's why Texas Instruments just added a unique speech synthesis module to its leadership series of TM990 microcomputers. Working with a TM990/100 or 101M CPU, the new TM990/306 module can verbalize 179 words, including 0 to 12 and A to Z. Loudly. And clearly.

 

   DANGER
  STOP TEST 
    AND
CHECK TEMPERATURE

 

Applications: the sky's the limit

Applications are limited only by your imagination. Anywhere you need vocal instructions, you can use the new TM990/306. In employee training. To replace or supplement alarms and indicators. Whenever you must improve the machine/man interface.

Expandable vocabulary

You construct commands and instructions from the basic word bank. It's large enough for most industrial applications. But, with a little ingenuity, you can enlarge the TM990/306 vocabulary. For instance, combine "N" with "crease" for "increase". Or "push" with "button", "over" with "range".

An on-board amplifier can drive an 8-ohm speaker to a 2.5 watt output. You can also connect an external amplifier to the pre-amp output so that everyone in an area can get the message at once.

At a quantity one price of $1280.00*, the TM990/306 module brings you clear, concise industrial grade speech. It brings to more than 60 the TM990 modules and accessories that speed and simplify the use of microelectronics in commercial and industrial applications.

Hear the TM990/306 speak today. Arrange an audition at your nearest TI Distributor System Center. Or for more information, write Texas Instruments Incorporated, P.O. Box 1443, M/S 6404, Houston, Texas 77001.

 

*U.S. price, subject to change without notice

 

 

 

 

[Electronics, Apr 10, 1980, p. 33]

TI to provide speech technology to its customers

 

Now that National Semiconductor Corp. has announced plans to begin selling speech-synthesis chip sets to original-equipment manufacturers [Electronics, March 27, p. 39], look for Texas Instruments Inc. to make the technology behind its speech synthesis available to outside customers as well. Expected soon from the Dallas firm is apackage that may include a second-generation, microprocessor-compatible speech-synthesis chip. Like its predecessor, which was first employed as part of a three-chip set in TI's Speak & Spell learning aid [Electronics, June 22, 1978, p. 39], the new chip will be fabricated in p-mos and will work with alinear predictive coding technique. TI is believed to be setting up its regional technology center in Chicago to provide customer support for vocabulary development and for writing linear predictive code to be housed in standard erasable programmable read-only memory. Pending availability of the new chip, customers may begin work with the already available TM990/306 speech-synthesis module [Electronics, Nov. 8, 1979, p. 44].
 

[Electronics, Apr 10, 1980, pp. 113-118]
Speech synthesis chip borrows human intonation
by David W. Weinrich, National Semiconductor Corp., Santa Clara, Calif.

 

Specialized processor fetches pulse-code-modulated speech from ROM; compression keeps data rate competitive with linear-predictive coding

 

Excerpts:

 

Sidebar: Techniques of Speech Synthesis

 

Three main techniques are presently being used to synthesize human speech. They are formant synthesis, linearpredictive coding (LPC), and waveform digitization with compression. With these techniques, vocal utterances, or phonemes, can be linked by linguistic rules to generate words. With vocabularies of over 200 words, these rules and the electronic overhead from their implementation become cost-effective. For smaller vocabularies, however, full-word generation is generally most economical. As memory costs are reduced, the size of the vocabulary for this tradeoff will increase.

Formant synthesis is a technique for modeling the natural resonances of the vocal tract. 

For recognizable speech, at least three formants should be used for each voice utterance.
With formant synthesis, voiced sounds are generated from an impulse source that is modulated in amplitude to control intensity. The resulting signal is passed through two levels of filtering. The first is a time-varying filter composed of cascaded resonators that correspond to the source-spectrum and mouth-radiation characteristics of the speech waveform.

Unvoiced sounds are generated as white noise is passed through a variable-pole-zero filter. The second filter used for voiced sounds can be reused for the unvoiced sounds. The coefficients for these filters are stored in ROM. An approximate number of memory bits required for a second of speech is 400.

Linear-predictive coding is very similar to formanesynthesis. Both are based in the frequency domain and both can use similar hardware. A basic difference is that LPC uses previous conditions to determine present filter coefficients. The quality of the synthesis improves as the number of coefficients is increased. With ten coefficients, an approximate number of bits per second required for speech is 1,200.

Waveform digitization is the earliest approach taken for speech synthesis, and this is the technique used by the devices described in this article. It relies on nothing more than sampling of the waveform in the time domain at twice the highest frequency of interest (this is known as the Nyquist rate). However, critical to the use of this technique is data compression; otherwise, memory requirements are prohibitive.

References

1. L. R. Rabiner, et al., "Computer Synthesis of Speech by Concatenation of Formant-Coded Words," Bell System Technical Journal, 1971.

2. Richard Wiggins, "Low Cost Speech Synthesis," Speech Recognition Synthesis Session, 1978 Midcon Professional Program.

[Note: Richard Wiggins managed speech synthesis products at TI, as one of four engineers who made the first TI LPC synthesis chip.]

[Article goes on to explain compression techniques used in National Semiconductor's speech synthesis]

Figure 6 shows a configuration whereby a microprocessor controls the speech processor via National Semiconductor's Microbus [Electronics, July 20, 1978, p. 113].

 

 

[Electronics, Apr 10, 1980, p. 42]
Speech synthesis
Want a talking IC? TI says 'Call us'

After more than a year of refusing to sell its much-sought-after speech synthesis chip set to outside customers, Texas Instruments Inc. did an about-face last week. The Dallas...

Bernard H. List, TI vice president who heads up the company's U.S. mos operations, denies that recently announced speech-circuit marketing plans by National Semiconductor Corp. [Electronics, March 27, p. 39] and others are a driving factor in the TI move. Rather, List says, the move had to wait for acommitment to add production capacity and the ability to support customers in developing high-quality synthetic speech using
LPC techniques.

Production quantities will be available during the second half of 1981, OEM-priced at about $13 for the two-chip set containing the TMS5100 speech synthesizer circuit and a TMS6100 128-kilobit read-only-memory. Prototype quantities of the synthesizer will be available as necessary this year.

p-MOS. These circuits are fabricated in p-channel mos technology and are the same devices as those in TI's Speak & Spell [Electronics, Aug. 31, 1978, p. 109].  The combined learning aid and toy has been enormously successful, and, says TI, is the harbinger of a $3 billion semiconductor market by the late 1980s. That figure includes speech recognition and authentication—research areas in which the firm is active, as is IBM, among others  (see "Speech recognition takes astride," p. 42).

 

The 5100 and 6100 are the initial offerings in two new series of TI chips designated the TMS5000 and TMS6000 lines. The firm is believed to be developing additional p-mos parts, including asynthesizer chip to work with 8- or 16-bit microprocessor controllers. It is pushing its p-mos 4-bit TMS1000 family as the controller for the present chip set, noting that it will add only about $2.

Services. TI will immediately begin offering vocabulary and speech development services priced in OEM quantities at $200 per synthetic speech word, which is defined by the company as 1 second of utterances. The 128-K ROM can hold 100 words of synthetic speech, TI says.

In addition to the 5100 and 6100 components, TI will offer a version of its TM990/306 speech synthesizing module for industrial customers who want to develop their own vocabulary.

The original 990/306 board was offered last year [Electronics,  Nov. 8, 1979, p.44] containing a standard vocabulary stored in erasable programmable ROM for use with the company's 16-bit TM990 microprocessor family for industrial control, test, and security applications. -Wesley R. Iversen

 

[Note: the papers of TI vice-president Bernie List are in the TI Archive at DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.  In the Gene Frantz papers, there are production schedule documents for some speech chips.]

 

 

[Electronics, May 22, 1980, p. 34]

Addenda
Look for Texas Instruments Inc. to announce a version of its TMS 1000 4-bit single-chip microcomputer housing an 8-bit digital-to-analog converter.
 

[Electronics, May 22, 1980, p. 95-105]
Speech I/O is making itself heard

 

full text of articles:

Electronics-1980-05-22 Speech IO is making itself heard.pdf

 

Excerpt from sidebar: Three ways to design speech synthesis

 

In the case of Texas Instruments, its trio of chips represents an integrated-circuit model of the vocal tract. Basic to a model is the linear predictive coding technique. LPC
provides the feedback values or coefficients for a second-order digital lattice filter on the a synthesizer chip.

 

This multistage linear filter mimics the major resonant modes of the vocal cavity in the human vocal tract. A TMS 1000 microprocessor performs the calculations to derive the filter coefficients. The third chip is a word-storage read-only memory that holds the speech parts broken into four parameters—voicing, pitch, amplitude, and frequency. A complex software algorithm manipulates the sound parameters to create the speech synthesis.

 

The benefit of LPC is that it takes advantage of the slow time constants of the human vocal tract. These physiological constraints limit the range of formants (frequency ranges) that can follow a prior set. LPC predicts new filter characteristics based on prior sets. Predicting and generating the formant sets reduces memory requirements, as well as the overall system data rate, which is 1,200 bits per second.
 

 

 

[Electronics, May 22, 1980, p. 166]
ad for TM990/189
Electronics-1980-05-22 ad tm990-189.pdf

 

[Electronics, May 22, 1980, p. 188]
Ad: 1980 Osborne Microcomputer Handbook Series

 

An Introduction to Microcomputers Volume 2 — Some Real Microprocessors

 

Every major 4-bit. 8-bit and 16-bit microprocessor through 1978 is described in this original 1400+ page volume. Architecture, timing, instruction set and usage are detailed for each of the 20 microprocessors, including the Intel 8086 and TMS9940.

 

[Note: Adam Osborne wrote a long, scathing report for TI's Office of Strategy, recommending that TI kill the TMS9940. His final recommendation was that TI adapt a 9900 chip to have more on-board RAM, and configurable I/O pinouts to compete with the 8085. He notes TI's "accidental" dominance of the microprocessor market in the 70s with the TMS1000, followed by a complete lack of strategy.]

 

 

[Electronics, Jun 5, 1980, p. ]
TM990 gets faster and more powerful

 

Texas Instruments Inc. is applying its bipolar bit-slice technology at the board level to provide enhanced speed and number-crunching capabilities for users of the TM990 microcomputer module series. The TM990/1481 is a two-board set that uses the company's SN74S481 Schottky, 4-bit slices to provide a 16-bit central processing unit that emulates the mos TMS9900 CPU. It includes instructions that enhance integer and floating- point arithmetic. Although the 1481's bipolar circuitry uses up much more power than does the mos circuitry of the TM990/100M and 101M, it is three to six times faster, the Dallas company says. The 1481 is priced at $5,000 per unit and will be delivered in 16 weeks.

 

 

[Electronics, Jun 5, 1980, p. 200]

TI 990 gets software-compatible board

 

The model CPU-200 microcomputer board from Erni & Co. is based on Texas Instruments' 16-bit TMS9900 microprocessor. It provides the central processing functions for Erni's recently announced 990E industrial microcomputer system software while offering software compatibility with TI's 990 minicomputers and microcomputers. The CPU-200 features a 56-line proprietary bus that allows memory addressing of up to 64 kilobytes and input/output capabilities by using the TMS 9900 bit-serial communications register unit. Up to 4,096 inputs and outputs may be addressed individually. An RS-232 or current-loop serial port is provided.

 

The unit also features 16 vectored interrupts, an eight-line bit programmable port, and an internal timer. It operates at 3MHz. The external control functions of the TMS 9900 are available to the user.

 

The board sells for $560.

 

Erni & Co., 3316 Commercial Ave., Northbrook, IL. 60062. Phone (312) 480-9240 [341]

 

 

 

 

[Electronics, Jun 5, 1980, p. 225]
ad for TMS9914 GPIB controller
Electronics-1980-06-05 TMS9914 IEEE-488.pdf

[Electronics, Jun 5, 1980, p.231 ]

Bubble memory board fits TI 990 minicomputers

 

The model 990-040 bubble memory board is compatible with the 990 series of mini- and micro-computers manufactured by Texas Instruments Inc. It provides 69 kilobytes of non- volatile, nonmechanical mass storage on ahalf-slot communications-regis- ter-unit (ow) board. Six TIB0203 bubble storage devices provide 92 kilobits of storage apiece for atotal of 69,228 bytes of data storage. No external hardware is required to plug the board directly into the ...

 

[Electronics, Jun 5, 1980, p.118 ]

To test coder-decoder chips, or codecs, for example, a system made by W&G Instruments Inc. of Livingston, N. J., is popular (see "Testing telecommunications chips," p. 118) and in fact is commonly described as the industry pacesetter. In one use, TI controls its W&G system with a  TM990 minicomputer working through an IEEE-488 bus.

 

[Electronics, Jun 5, 1980, p.99 ]
Article on encryption processors lists a TMS9940 entry.

 

 

[Electronics, Jun 19, 1980, p.111]
[Ad for new TI chips - especially Dynamic RAM controllers]

        This is the fourth in a series of announcements of innovative Low-Power Schottky 
        devices Texas Instruments has introduced over the last 
        few months. All of these  circuits are designed to work with today's 
        state-of-the-art microprocessor systems. 

Save design time. Production costs. Board space. And get all the benefits of Low-Power Schottky. All in a new series of LS LSI devices from Texas Instruments.

 

Devices that are designed to stand-alone. Or be part of athree-chip set. Devices that will make memory timing and refresh easier. Faster. More cost effective.

 

Four variations of a new memory refresh controller, SN54/74LS600 through LS6Ci3, also designated TIM99600 through TIM99603 for the 9900 Family, provide bus driving peripheral control capabilities for refresh of 4K, 16K and 64K dynamic RAMs to create a static appearance.

Each IC contains one 8-bit synchronous counter, nine 3-state buffer drivers, four RC controlled multivibrators and other control circuitry... all on a single chip.

 

In addition, the new LS600 through LS603 Series gives you a choice of transparent, cycle steal or burst refresh modes for 4K, 16K or 64K-bit memory. In the transparent refresh mode, row refresh cycles occur during inactive CPU memory times so that, in most cases, the entire memory refresh sequence can be done "transparently" (without interrupting CPU operations).

 

When the REF REQ pins are taken high to indicate an idle CPU/memory, as many rows as possible are refreshed, A low level on BUSY signals the CPU to wait until the end of the current row refresh cycle before resuming operations.

When the RC time constant programmed at RC BURST indicates that the safe refresh time of the memory has been exceeded, the memory refresh controller will automatically signal the CPU for an emergency burst-mode refresh by taking HOLD low. Automatic burst refresh will then be generated even when transparent or cycle steal refresh operations are already in progress.

 

This series of devices is available now in a space-saving 20-pin DIP. 

 

16-8 multiplexed latches are designed for storing data in 2 sets of 8-bit registers from 16 input signals. This provides the output bus with stored data from either set of registers.

 

These devices, designated SN54/74LS604 through LS607, TIM99604 through TIM99607 for the 9900 Family, contain 16 D-type registers on a single chip.

 

These devices also serve as an interface between the 16 address bits of amicroprocessor and a memory board. Row and column addresses can be loaded as one word from the microprocessor — then multiplexed sequentially to the RAM during RAS and CAS.

 

Choose 3-state (LS604, LS606) or open-collector (L5605, LS607) outputs in either of two operational speeds. Where speed is critical, LS604 and LS605 offer high-speed capability. LS606 and LS607 are especially designed to eliminate decoding voltage spikes. 

 

All devices in the LS604 Series operate from a single 5-V supply and are offered in 28-pin DIPs.

 

Memory timing controller, LS608, coming in the second half of 1980, will simplify timing of read, write and refresh operations in microprocessor/ dynamic RAM systems.

 

It will serve as a stand-alone interface between the MPU and dynamic RAM to provide correct timing. When used as part of the chip set, it will provide a higher performance dynamic RAM controller.  Critical times will be user RC programmable to provide ease and flexibility for optimum memory cycle performance.

 

Like all TI LS circuits, these new devices are low-cost and feature less heat generation, increased densities and improved system performance capabilities. 

 

TI's continuing commitment to innovative Low-Power Schottky technology lets you design with confidence. Because it serves more of your LS needs. It's the broadest line in the industry. For every low-power, high-performance application. Military systems, data processing, telecommunications and process control—and more.

 

Whether you use these new devices as stand alones, or as a three-chip set, they'll make your design job easier. Keep costs lower.

 

For the widest range of effective bipolar state-of-the art solutions, turn to
the leader. Turn to Texas Instruments for more Low-Power Schottky innovation.

 

For more information write to Texas Instruments Incorporated, P. 0. Box 225012, M/S 308, Dallas, Texas 75265.

 

[Electronics, Jun 19, 1980, p.146 ]
Automated Test Equipment. HP1702A GPIB bus controller. 
Block diagram shows TMS9981 and TMS9902 in HP1702A.

 

[Electronics, Jun 19, 1980, p.194 ]
TI 990s get real time executive and file manager
 

 

 

 

 

Electronics-1980-01-03 p182 Calculator.pdf

[+Ksarul]

Funny thing here. I was doing some parts hunting a couple of weeks ago and found someone selling a TMS5100 and a TMS5200. I bought both of them, as the prices were not too egregious. The same seller also had a few TMX9918 chips and a few TMS9903s. I bought some of the TMX9918s and the TMS9903s. Definitely an interesting source for odd chips. . .

[jbdigriz]

On 11/29/2021 at 3:00 PM, FarmerPotato said:

I found these articles about Texas Instruments, or advertisements from TI, in Electronics Magazine. Hosted at worldradiohistory.com. Currently I am working through 1980-81 hoping to find something on E-Bus Systems. I'm checking all the occurrences of 990 or other keywords.  If you want to get an idea what business and industrial computing was like in the 80s, I recommend browsing the whole magazine. 

 

 

Wow, that's a lot of digging! Be interesting to find documentation on the TM990/1481. Wonder how close to a 990/12 its instruction set might be? Likewise, although you didn't mention it here, but docs on the TM990/103 would be a nice find.

 

More industry publications like "Computer Design" in the bitsavers magazines section. http://bitsavers.org/magazines 

Edited December 5, 2021 by jbdigriz

[+FarmerPotato]

On 12/5/2021 at 11:02 AM, jbdigriz said:

Wow, that's a lot of digging! Be interesting to find documentation on the TM990/1481. Wonder how close to a 990/12 its instruction set might be? Likewise, although you didn't mention it here, but docs on the TM990/103 would be a nice find.

 

More industry publications like "Computer Design" in the bitsavers magazines section. http://bitsavers.org/magazines 

 

Yeah, so I'll put TM990 top of my list for when I next visit the DeGolyer Library TI archive.  There were 100s of 990 books, uncatalogued.

 

Here is some more info I found about the 990/1481, and other TM990 module block diagrams:

 

See 2TM002, and other TM990 cards nearby.

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/components/derivationAndTabulationAssociates/1982_DATA_Book_Microcomputer_Systems_Volume_26_Book_37_Edition_2_198112.pdf

 

TM990/1481 Bit-slice processor block diagram:

 

[jbdigriz]

15 hours ago, FarmerPotato said:

 

Yeah, so I'll put TM990 top of my list for when I next visit the DeGolyer Library TI archive.  There were 100s of 990 books, uncatalogued.

 

Here is some more info I found about the 990/1481, and other TM990 module block diagrams:

 

See 2TM002, and other TM990 cards nearby.

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/components/derivationAndTabulationAssociates/1982_DATA_Book_Microcomputer_Systems_Volume_26_Book_37_Edition_2_198112.pdf

 

TM990/1481 Bit-slice processor block diagram:

 

95 instructions, according to one ad I saw. So, I'm guessing something like the 99000 instruction set, ie. no  /12 floating point etc. Be interesting to get a dump of the microcode. You can see the reason for the TM990/103, then. A 2 board CPU + a memory board  means you just about have to go to something bigger than a 4 slot chassis for a useful TM990/1481 system.

 

Looking forward to a trip to the DeGolyer myself, when I'm able. If you get there before I do, please be on the lookout for anything /12, in maintenance manuals for the 990A13 chassis. I recently got the General Description volume, part# 2308774-9701, but it doesn't have the power supply schematics some are looking for. Also anything on the EI990 ethernet board. Dave Pitts is working on including support for that in his simulator.

 

Nice find on that D&TA databook, amazed I never stumbled across that before.

 

 

 

Edited December 7, 2021 by jbdigriz

[jbdigriz]

On 11/29/2021 at 8:31 PM, Ksarul said:

Funny thing here. I was doing some parts hunting a couple of weeks ago and found someone selling a TMS5100 and a TMS5200. I bought both of them, as the prices were not too egregious. The same seller also had a few TMX9918 chips and a few TMS9903s. I bought some of the TMX9918s and the TMS9903s. Definitely an interesting source for odd chips. . .

Yeah, I've been meaning to get some 9903s. Thanks for the tip.