[rescue] Wanted - 3B2

[wa2egp at att.net]

> i did that, along with the unofficial 2-drive hack.  used a pair of
> 80M seagates.  fit pretty well.  alas, the system board died shortly
> after that, for reasons i'm pretty sure were unconnected.
>
> i still have that dead system in my basement iirc.
>
> " Too bad they didn't go one more
> " version of that machine.  The next one would have been color.
>
> i remember that!  but even if they hadn't, it would've been easy to
> revise the old b&w to include greyscale.
>
> they were also supposedly -this-close- to releasing sVr3 for the 3b1
> when it was canned, with a substantial performance improvement.  the
> 3b1 os from convergent was actually berkeley based though svid
> compliant.

I have the last version of the OS which was a sVr?.?m (not sure of the exact
version) because they were working on a new revision when the 3B1/7300 was
canned so the programmers finished the job on their own and tacked on an "m"
to indicate the previous version was "modified". :)  IIRC that was around the
time that AT&T came out with that policy that all software you wrote belonged
to them, even if you were writing a game on another platform.  Lot of good
freeware came out at that time. :)

> since i had the hardware manual [with full schematics], around '95 i
> toyed with generating and releasing equation files to program
> off-the-shelf 40-pin fpgas with all of the system board random logic
> so that 3b1 clones could easily be made but i never got around to it.
> i also wanted to do a qic-40 floppy tape driver.  i still don't know
> enough about driver programming today.
>
> the one schematic the manual lacks is the video chip.

Figures.  I have no paperwork on the system such as schematics, just the
software.  I was just beginning to get into hardware and barely stumbling
around software.  I did manage to get the "expansion box" but did nothing with
it. I do like the "politically correct" text filter software that makes you
documents not gender biased and squeaky clean.  Always wanted to feed a text
version of Carlen's seven dirty words through it to see what happens. :)

If nothing else, the 3B1/7300 looked cool.  A number of years ago, I brought
one to school and left it on my desk on to see if the little propeller-heads
could crack the password.  Never happened.

Bob