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The ICT 1301 Resurrection Project.
The Project
The Aims of the project
Aim 1.
Progress = about 84%
Aim 2.
Progress = Six Public Days delivered.
Aim 3.
Progress = 100%
** The ICT 1301 Resurrection project **
Rebuilding a 1960's mainframe in 2006
Rebuilding a 1960's mainframe in 2006
Statement of the problems and issue's
This elderly machine is called Flossie, now my father advised me to never ask a lady her age. But the truth is that Flossie was built about 1961, spent a working life at London University, where one on her many roles was to produce GCE exam results, in about 1972 she was retired into private hands. So the age of the machine combined with the number of years since it last ran reliably, means we face a combination of many faults. For example, it was noted that 3 out of 10 of the programmed indicators, do not work correctly. However to resolve these problems, means we need a reliable Cpu decode of the functions required to fault find further. That coupled with the simple fact that at each switch on or off we risk a new fault being added to the growing list and some of our problems may just be either cold or warm up related. So all we can do is tackle each problem as it is identified or as it occurs, in the certain knowledge that it is one less problem to be resolved, when it is out of the way. The 'PLAN' is to work on the problems as follows:- 1st step is the basic control path based around Control registers one, two and three, the function decode, and the Register 'A' path, 2nd step is the IAS access, and load/store functions, and register interchange functions on registers 'B' and 'C' . 3rd step is the drum transfer functions, further successive steps are into the tape control unit and then we can start to tackle the peripherals.These pages are the news and information source for this project, so check back from time to time and see how we are doing on a month by month basis!
The work Diaries
The Supporters
