Aug 18 2013

Hi Herb
 I saw Kyle's post about the 4 mod 40.
When I worked at Intel, I was responsible for
the system level test of the UPP with the 4040.
When there I made a test tool that could read
the ROMs on the personality boards and control
the I/O. It had to emulate the 4040 bus.
Each personality card has 4001 code to run its I/O and
control signals to the EPROMs or fuse PROMs.
I called my board the slow-time-emulator. It
couldn't run code at full speed but was all I needed
to diagnose problems with the ROMs and RAM
used on the 4040 bus.

The buss had to run at
speed because it used dynamic drivers and
couldn't run at DC. What I did was to have the bus
run nops until the controlling computer had
a request to put an instruction onto the bus.
I wish now that I'd kept a schematic of it.
I'd always though it wouldn't be to big a deal to
run a PC parallel port to control a UUP but never
took the time to dig into it more.
Too many other projects.
Tinker Dwight

Herb replies:

I'm mostly trying to keep up with Kyle! I'

Someone in Germany contacted me, they recently made a 4001
 reader, to check out a 1970's counter that has a 4004 in
 it with 4001's. It did not look complicated but they have
 not shared the design yet. In fact, they asked me about
 ways to replace the 4001, because of course they are not
 user-programmable, and apparently he has a failed chip.

http://retrotechnology.com/restore/int_440.html

I am not well familiar with the 4/40 or the external UPP
 PROM programmer box, I have both but have powered neither
 yet. I've looked at the 4/40 schematics and I see what 
I call "a kind of bus". I appreciate that you've 
commented that it does amount to a bus. I did not 
see much of a "bus" on the UPP.

Can the UPP be run by a 4/40 system?

HErb

Aug 17

-- For ROM replacement the 4289 can be used but it won't replace
the chips I/O.
The only way I know to do it is with some level converters, a
state machine and some latches to hold things like address.
Depending on the 4001, it may have either input or outputs,
as determined by the mask. If it is only inputs, it is a 
little simpler.I doubt there is anything that can't be done
 with a medium small FPGA.

The 4040 bus is really quite small since the bus path is just
4 bits. When compared with the buss on the 4 mod 40 it is smaller.
On the 4 mod 40, they expand the bus to all the selects,
12 bits of direct address, 8 bits of instruction and the 4
bits of data bus.

When connected directly to the 4040, there are quite
a few less lines needed.
As I recall, the personality cards need 4 bit bus, sync, reset,
select and clocks. Not a heavy number of bus lines.

 
Oops, forgot the question.
If you have a board that can output 7 controls, 8 data out
and 8 data inputs. If you have that I would say you
could code it up to run. Do you have a personality card for
the 1702As?

Dwight

HErb:
That answers the general question about running the UPP. 
Do I have a UPP personality card for the 1702As?
I"ll have to check. I read/write 1702As with a
 Prolog series 90.

Again, specifically- did the 4/40 ever run a UPP? - Herb


I doubt it. The UUP was really intended to be used with
the MDS800. The 4/40 should come with a programming
socket for doing 1702As.
When I started at Intel, they were just beginning to use
Series II but we still had a number of MDS800s in the lab.
Being multibuss, we could upgrade memory and processors
with out a big deal. Also having a lot of slots meant we
could have a couple of ice boards without having to use
an expansion bus as the Series II would have required.

Dwight