Building my own interface.

The Transputer system fascinted me very much. After that moment I have contact with this man about the Transputer system. And later he aquire more Transputer board’s and i could borrow some. But my problem was that I have NO interface between the Transputerboard’s and a PC so I decide to build one by myself.

In the handbook of the CSA ISA to Transputerlink interface, Transputer Education Kit User Guide, I found a schema of the CSA-Transputer interface. This circuit around the IMSC012 would I build. Instand of the IMSC012 I bought the IMSC011 IC’s with could have the same function and even more. Together with some TTL-ic’s the project come to a nice print.

From the Transputer Education Kit User Guide, CSA.

I connect my IO-Print to the Transputer and start testing my interface. With the famouse 24 byte [Who-you-are program ?] i get as answer AA AA 00 00 back. This is a 32 bit Transputer !! It is working.

Next step is the Mandelbro program, but when I want to run this at 60 % of the picture the program stop’s.

Mandelbrot stops around 60 %

Why ???

Each time I start the Mandelbrot I have the same result. Each time !! This point take me a lot of time to find the problem. After a couple week’s a call my friend with the originel CSA-Interface and I could borrow his system to compare this with my selfbuild system. I use the originel CSA IO interface in my IPC system, use the good working program. At the end I start swapping IC’s between the original CSA IO interface and my self build interface. After a lot of debugging and swapping IC’s i found there was aq new 74LS245 withs was wrong ?? At low speed it was working Oke, but at high speed I get a lot of problem’s. Al the 10 new buy pieces were wrong. So i take a look in my storice and found a old 74LS245. Thisa one works very good so I am happy.

ISA-interface testing

Conclusion: even new IC’s could be wrong.

The Transputerboard I use is a Caplan board with 2 T800 Transputers with each 2 Mb memory.

Now I have a selfbuild ISA to Transputer link interface with is working good. Next step is I to understand the propgram’s, how to program and wordt with OCCAM an the Transputer.

As a member of the Dutch Hobby Computer Club, the section Retro Computers (www.retro.hcc.nl sorry, dutch only) I visit almost there meeting’s. Last meeting at 27 September 2017 we talk a lot about the Transputer systems. We planned to go to work with 4 people at the Transputer system’s. Talking, thinking, study, programming and working. So I am not alone.