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Any AES packrats out there?

Chuck(G)

Chuck(G)

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I've got an 8" floppy here from what I believe to be an AES-90 word processor (it's branded with the Harris Lanier brand). Hard-sectored, MMFM-encoded, USRT-bit-ordered--and a very primitive layout. I don't believe the thing even names its documents.

Note that I'm not certain that it's AES, but it seems to fit.

Does anyone have any operator's guides or other information on the AES beast that might give me a clue as to what I'm looking at?
 
Just out of curiosity, do you have a binary dump we can look at ? Not that I have any info on an AES-90, but if you've got the dump, I'd love to see it.
patscc
 
Yeah, knock yourself out. It took me forever to unravel the modulation and bit-ordering and addressing. Oddly, the sectors are exactly 256 bytes long--no CRC fields appended.

Here's the first 100K. I've determined that the interleave is 0,5,11,16,21,26,31,4,10...

I wonder if there is a directory and the filenames are encoded in RAD50? I'll give that a try.
 

Attachments

  • AES1.ZIP
    18.8 KB · Views: 2
Chuck(G) said:
Yeah, knock yourself out. It took me forever to unravel the modulation and bit-ordering and addressing. Oddly, the sectors are exactly 256 bytes long--no CRC fields appended.

Here's the first 100K. I've determined that the interleave is 0,5,11,16,21,26,31,4,10...

I wonder if there is a directory and the filenames are encoded in RAD50? I'll give that a try.
Click to expand...

The only thing I have is the two page brochure under aes on bitsavers. It does imply there was file naming
Also notice they're putting the diskette into the drive backwards!
 
Are you thinking the area at 0x4FE and after is a Radix-50 encoded, for want of a better term, FAT ? What word size did the AES-90 use ?
It kinda looks like the "file" (maybe block would be a better term) layout is grouped by screen page dump ?
patscc
 
I'm going to assume that the internal CPU was probably based on the AES-80, which means 8 bit data bytes. Endian aspect for 16-bit quantities looks to be big, but I could be wrong. I think file names are at 500-5ff, a00-aff, etc.

First thing that I have to figure is the CRC used on each sector (the last 2 bytes). I'm going to use the blocks full of FD, with only the first byte differing to see what I can determine.

Note that this document or set of documents appears to be related to Operation PRETENSE--a sting operation involving government corruption in Mississippi during the 1980s.
 
Reading the AES-80 manual, it refers to a generator for BCH-type CRC. This is waaay before my time, but might the BCH codes be prepended to content on the disk, instead of the "usual" way ?
patscc
 
Are you sure we're dealing filenames, since the data in the .dat seems to be just one doc ? From the setup in the brochure, with the Valley of the Dolls secretary, might this not be some mapping to organize the text into typewriter-sized chunks ?
patscc
 
Well, it could be--early CPT floppies were organized that way. I'll have to throw together a little code to deskew the data and see if things fit together better.

I don't think the codes are BCH--too short (16 bits) for 254 byte messages--and probably too computationally intensive for an 8-bit processor.

Stay tuned...
 
I think you're right about the 8-bit word size, though it looks like it uses a 12-bit instruction. Sounds familiar.
Since the unit maxes out at 4k RAM, could we be looking at a buffer disk for printer output ?

The AES-80 looks a strange beast.
patscc
 
I wonder if that sequence (or something like it) isn't related to print justification?

At any rate, here's the deskewed 100K. Note that it looks a lot better.
 

Attachments

  • AES2.ZIP
    18.3 KB · Views: 1
Thanks, Al--I'm not even certain that this is an AES box that created this. The brand of the floppy might be a clue, but as you know, all hard-sector 8" floppies are pretty much the same. This could well have been created on a different processor--such is the nature of the stuff I work on.

I'd hate to bother Mr. Virard with this flimsy suspicion--even assuming that he remembers anything about what he did 40 years ago. All I can say for certain is that the hard-sectoring puts the disk sometime during the 70s to early 80s. What's odd is the use of MMFM and reverse bit-ordering.

I was hoping for an AES veteran to say yeah or nay.

P.S. As the disk I'm working with comes from USDOJ, I wondered what Wapros might be in use at the time. It turns out that in 1979, the wapro situation in the USG was a mess. Look at page 31. Any idea what that thing is? A Redactron maybe?
 
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It might just be worth asking him, if he remembers it well, it may be a treasure trove, hell, he may even have things stored someplace that relate to the AES, perhaps documentation or something, Chuck, i'd send him a line, if he doesn't reply, no skin of your rear end, if he does, and says he doesn't remember, same deal, but if he replies and DOES remember it, then your golden.

Chuck(G) said:
Thanks, Al--I'm not even certain that this is an AES box that created this. The brand of the floppy might be a clue, but as you know, all hard-sector 8" floppies are pretty much the same. This could well have been created on a different processor--such is the nature of the stuff I work on.

I'd hate to bother Mr. Virard with this flimsy suspicion--even assuming that he remembers anything about what he did 40 years ago. All I can say for certain is that the hard-sectoring puts the disk sometime during the 70s to early 80s. What's odd is the use of MMFM and reverse bit-ordering.

I was hoping for an AES veteran to say yeah or nay.

P.S. As the disk I'm working with comes from USDOJ, I wondered what Wapros might be in use at the time. It turns out that in 1979, the wapro situation in the USG was a mess. Look at page 31. Any idea what that thing is? A Redactron maybe?
Click to expand...
 
I'd bug him. If it were me, I'd be tickled pink someone even remembers what I did 40 years ago.
Re pg. 31, with that case, if it's a drive unit, I'd guess at an early Wang.
I like appendix V
patscc
 
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