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British Columbia Peripherals and Components for Four-Phase Systems

British Columbia
NeXT

NeXT

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2008
Messages
8,170
Location
Kamloops, BC, Canada
This is a pretty long stretch but I asked in the cctalk mailing list months ago and that went nowhere.

I'm looking for anything and everything pertaining to systems, peripherals, software, documentation and components for Four-Phase Systems computers and peripherals, terminals, boards, loose IC's schematics, cabling...anything. I can provide shipping addresses in both Canada and the United States or turnaround on documents/boards if you wish to only have them scanned/photographed and returned. I am also working on a process for archiving card stacks and tapes. Disks are possible, but I do not have the hardware at this time. This is all for an ongoing project to get a machine running and for general archiving because unexpectedly these machine seemed to fallen into a black hole. Duplicates are appreciated.

If you have complete systems that you are not interested in separating I can also offer to connect you to other computer museums who may be interested in assisting.
 
I'm looking for information too. We may be able to assist each other.

I just joined this forum, wanting to find out about some Four-Phase hardware that's been sitting in a box for at least 30 years. My wife worked on these systems back in the 80s. When they were phased out (hey, maybe that's the 5th Phase?) the company didn't even want the hardware back, so her team divvied up the boards and took them home. She had no intention of rebuilding a running system, but thought the parts would look good hanging on the wall. Those turquoise Dale components (I thought they were capacitors at first, but it looks like they have resistance values stamped on 'em), red and blue caps, gold and white ICs, not to mention the front panel are quite colorful. We finally took the box out of the closet, dusted them off and got them framed to commemorate the years we both worked in IT/systems development. (Although I'm a VAX guy, DEC's boards weren't as pretty.)

PXL_20230831_024817204.jpg

She's also got a Four-Phase Systems Engineering Handbook, several hundred pages of tiny text in a tiny notebook with at least 40 tiny tabs.

But wait, that's not all! It also includes several reference cards with thrilling titles like
  • VISION System Reference Card
  • MFE/IV - Multifunction Executive Operator's Quick Reference
  • SYSTEM IV/70 Machine Instruction Card
  • Series IV Reference Summary
Good stuff.
PXL_20230831_025433406.jpg

Would this be useful? I don't think I want to drop the documentation in the mail, but instead would be willing to have it scanned and sent to you.

In return, I'm just looking for descriptions of the four boards we've got. I can guess at the functionality of a couple of them but would like confirmation. Here are the part numbers:
  • 11003891-A - RAM board?
  • 11003104-52 - Communications controller?
  • 11004455-A - dunno
  • And the oddball - Diablo Systems SCH NO 11981 Rev D - It's got all the pretty turquoise resistors on it, plus a bunch of 1/4w resistors, a few Motorola NAND gates and op amps. It's the board in the upper right corner of the photo above. Disk controller?
Thoughts?

Chris
 
I would absolutely cover the cost to get those scanned and sent to us either as individual scanned pages or PDF format. I wouldn't mind a copy but Al Kossow would also probably like to hear from you too. There is a small amount of documentation available on bitsavers however none of it is duplicate to what you have, so anything helps.

In return, I'm just looking for descriptions of the four boards we've got. I can guess at the functionality of a couple of them but would like confirmation.
Click to expand...

11003891-A is likely a 90012912 96kb memory board or a 48K memory board. I have the same boards and they are fitted with "RAM-9" chips. Technical data and a catalog of the numbering system Four-Phase used on their IC's isn't known to still exist since they never published it outside the company.

11003104-52 is also known as the 9002272X-27 Distribution and Timing card. That I can tell It doubles for part of the clock signal generation and mapping of the terminal displays with the main memory, since the system and all connected terminals share the same memory. Still not sure why they wanted to do that but okay that's one way to exchange data between the terminal controller and the CPU.

11004455-A is an intelligent communications controller. The large DIP is its own microprocessor, complete with dedicated memory. I have no confirmation if this was part of a two-board set or not due to a lack of documentation. That I can tell if you were adding a modem, this is how you did it.

Diablo 11981 does not immediately come up in my lists but the small size and the notched corner makes me believe that it's a board out of a series 30 Diablo disk drive (and it has a VERY similar board, P/N 11078 as seen on page 3-8)
 
I'll be glad to get the documents scanned and over to you. Do you have specific requirements/needs for the electronic copy? I'm assuming it needs to be OCR'ed, indexed and text-searchable. Any recommendations for scanning services that you've worked with before? I'm in Chicago, so should have no difficulty finding a provider. Will get a couple quotes to you and Al to make sure we're in the same ballpark for services and costs.
 
At the very least the ability to make it text searchable helps greatly for large lists printed within. Having it OCR'd and indexed is a bonus.
FYI I'd ask you in PM's regarding billing but since you only have three posts right now the forum restricts that until you have 15 posts.

Edited: Since you are in the Chicago area would you have any reason to be in the Elmhurst area next weekend? The Vintage Computer Festival Midwest will be taking place there and I will be in attendance so if you want to talk more in person and look at a variety of older computers I can at the very least offer an invitation.
 
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No problem, I'll endeavor to submit enough posts to exceed the limit while searching for a scanning solution.
 
FYI, Al put me in touch with a local member, Jason T. I'm going to give him the manuals to scan, sometime in the next couple weeks.
 
I am going to try and PM you my email address and see if you get the message. I don't know if you'll be able to reply back through the PM, so just drop me a message through my email. ;)
 
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