I've programmed two of them...
I've programmed two of them...
I know this thread is a little old for a reply, but I just came across it... I first saw the Bi-Tran Six in about 1971-72 -- I was in fifth grade at the time. Our local school district had two of them, and I was invited to view a demonstration of the machines as I was interested in computers. When I was in eleventh grade, I took a computer programming class, and the same two Bi-Trans were still in use, and were one of the machine types we were required to write programs for. It was my first exposure to Octal numbering, as the six bits were typically grouped as a word consisting of two, three-bit nibbles. If I remember correctly, the op-codes were also documented as Octal. The Bi-Tran couldn't do much, but the lights gave you a good view of what was happening in the registers. I still contend that understanding this machine gave you a good background for programming many types of simple embedded microprocessors -- I think this machine may have a Harvard architecture. The last I saw of the two Bi-Trans was in the mid 1980s, when they could have been mine for the asking -- unfortunately, I didn't ask -- I suspect they ended up as dumpster fodder along with a PDP-8...