Datapoint 5500 ALU driven

[Neon_WA]

on the way home today spotted some bulky old computers, so stopped to pick them up.
Didnt know what they were, so grabbed one complete unit & stripped parts from the second one looking a bit worse for wear.

So now i am a proud owner of a Datapoint 5500 (model 5548), but cant find much info about it

I haven't opened the good one, but the main board from the second (actually a 8200 model) has a 1980 Mostek MK3880N (Z80) running it

Does anyone have any source of information on this model?

below is a pic of a similar unit.

also with them was a data terminal box (Datapoint branded). The main board has as its main chips 1976-1977 TI TMS6011NC UARTs
Does anyone have any data on these?

edit >> changed pic to actual unit

[kosmokrator]

holly shit!!!
very impresive find!
i want to see board photos!!!

[Neon_WA]

[thomsonicus]

[Neon_WA]

[Neon_WA]

some pics of the 5500 DataPoint under the cover..

the only chips on the main processor board that could possibly drive it are two (2) 24-pin Signetics 74S181N

Are these enough to drive the puter or must there be other key chips i have missed?
others on the board i am not sure on are
AMD AM27S03APC << 6 of these (plastic 16 pin dip)
MMI 6301-1J << 6 of these (ceramic 16 pin dip)
Fairchild 74164DC << 2 of these (ceramic 14 pin dip)
TI SN74154AN << 1 of these (plastic 24 pin dip)
plus about another 60 or more 16-pin TI or Signetics 74s

also on the display card there is 14 x Intel P2102A-1

one thing i must note... the unit is made for quick & easy access & removal of cards. The case has two spring load clips & the main assembly hinges so boards can be removed easily

[Elar]

That's an helluva cool unit. The CPU in this is 8 bit microcoded design using TTL chips. 6301 256x4 PROM's hold the microcode, 27S03 16x4 SRAM's make the register file. You should restore it to full glory, incluing the CRT.

Here's how to fix CRT cataract's (part 1 to 7):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l1EoMmmOcQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nirbI3-vilc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpsZy7tYKaU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84q5TtGJuHw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp7mg9VbUpw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dME7HGkZECA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_rh6n288M

[Neon_WA]

[donutty]

You must make an effort to restore this machine! It's your duty.

[Neon_WA]

[gep2_]

Great page!

I'm Gordon Peterson, and I was the one at Datapoint who who originally wrote the DOS for the Datapoint 5500 (DOS.D), as well as The ARC System LAN. I also moderate the DatapointComputers Yahoogroup. A friend (the son Audie of one of Datapoint's founders, Gus Roche) is presently trying to restore some 1800s and 3800s. I've given him the link to this page, so he may show up here too. At LinkedIn there is a Datapoint Alumni group for former Datapoint employees. I have hundreds of Datapoint cassettes with various files on them (although presently don't have a reader setup, my personal 2200 is in storage and hasn't been looked at, or powered up, in more than 20 years). I'm at gep2_R_E_M_O_V_E_AT_terabites.com, and my personal website is personal dot terabites dot com.

The 8008 was a single-chip implementation of the 2200 CPU. The 5500 was microcoded and had a much larger and more powerful instruction set (and was much faster, too).

The original 2200 had up to 4 4K-byte memory cards, based on 1Kbit 2102 DRAMs IIRC. The 5500 had 48K or 56K of RAM, accessible through a 16-entry memory map table (4K per entry) plus a boot/debug ROM (which allowed the machine to boot from cassette, ARCnet or hard drive, and provided a nice 'hardware' debug capability). The RAM cards were 4x12Kbytes each, usually using Mostek 4kbit DRAMs. The extra 8K of DRAM would have been on the other (rightmost) card with the ROMs, IIRC.

Note that the display refresh memory was separate and dedicated and was on the display board (the upper board on the right side, looking at the raised chassis), along with the loadable character generator RAM.

[hugo929]

Nice to meet you great engineer here

[Neon_WA]

Welcome Gordon and thanks for the additional info

thou most of the members here collect cpus & chips, there is a few here that also enjoy collecting from full boards right thru to complete systems.
The DataPoint 5500 is certainly the highlight of my complete systems, with the LSI-11/2 CPU card the highlight of my board collection
http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11618


Even thou this unit is basically complete, i will take some time going thru checking all its components before powering it up. Then i will need to call on your services regarding software to drive the beast

cheers
Stu

PS >> i will ask one of the moderators to edit ur email address so it isnt picked up by spambots

[AORoche]

All,

A Datapoint 5500 system is quite a rare find and worth preserving if not restoring. Since almost all of Datapoint's customers were commercial, there are few systems in existence.

For those interested in a brief history of Datapoint (Computer Terminal Corp originally) go to wikipedia "Datapoint 2200". The information is quite reasonably accurate.

I am very biased as you may expect, but it is not unfair to say that Datapoint and it's inventors such as Gordon, pioneered the personal computer revolution.

Here are some claims that can be backed up based on docs that some folks have.

1. First RS232 video terminal, Datapoint 3300, launched in 1969. It was a huge success as it targeted replacing the ASR33 Teletype. It even had a streaming cassette record/playback unit and a TI made thermal screen printer. In 1969!

2. First desktop computer, Datapoint 2200 in 1969/70. The 5500 was the second generation desktop in 1973/74. The 2200 version I was the origin of the Intel 8008 and predates the 8008 by almost a year. Intel was motivated to design the 8008 based on Datapoint (CTC) request for a single chip CPU solution to simplify the 2200 discrete TTL CPU board, but CTC did not adopt it since they were already well in to production before Intel competed their design. 2200 version II in 1970 was a full parallel CPU in discrete TTL and resembled the later Intel 8080, but had dual register banks like the Z80. The 2200 version I was the origin of the X86 architecture, little endian addressing scheme and the 8008 instruction set (Intel talked hex and CTC talked octal, so get out your HP 11C please).

3. First deployed LAN, ARCNET in 1976/77. Ethernet was still being developed while ARCNET was shipping. ARCNET is still popular in some applications.

4. First shared resource file server and network OS, RMS (Resource Management System).

5. The first patented single chip CPU from TI was inspired partly based on the 2200. CTC asked TI to also design a 2200 compatible chip, but due to development issues, CTC went their own way.

6. The largest revenue exporter of computer equipment from the US around 1980 to 85. Larger than IBM.

For example, in 1979, before the IBM 5150 PC was shipping, Datapoint (name changed from CTC), had installed thousands of ARCNET systems WW. The target market was corporate front and back office integrated solutions (although all kinds of uses were deployed by then). In 1981, as a junior engineer in R&D, I had three networked processors in my office. A 5500 hooked to a Data I/O for PROMs, a 3800 processor for word processing and a 2200 for programming and experimentation.

Datapoint was way ahead of anyone else for at least a full decade before the IBM PC was introduced and maintained a lead in deployed networks well in to the 80's. Datapoint was eventually overshadowed by the PC and Ethernet and lost the war for dominance. It's a long and as usual complex story.

By all means preserve your rare piece of history! If you have the gumption, restore it back to working order. In years to come, you will be rewarded

[Neon_WA]