Eclipse S/130 revival

[cullyrichard]

Yesterday I drove about 30 minutes away from my house to retrieve this eclipse S/130 chassis along with 9 System Industries/
Zetaco cards for my upcoming S/140 project (more on that later) and two late DG terminals.

This S/130 was unfortunately parted out at some point in its life and is missing all of the cards. I spent some time designing a new PSU card with some TDK Lambda DC/DC modules and I’m hopeful that I will have a powered backplane soon. Im on the hunt now for a CPU, MMPU and potentially some RAM for the system. If anyone knows of the cards, or has some they’re willing to part with, I’m happy to make a deal!

This machine represents a long term project, I did not want this machine to languish until it was scrapped so I do hope to give it a second chance at life and I would like to see it run once again. I will detail what I did with the power supply once I am able to have it fabricated.

Fingers crossed I can give this machine the retirement it deserves!

 

[cullyrichard]

CPU1 and MMPU1 found! I might need to put a bounty on the CPU 2 card lol

I managed to snag both off of eBay at a somewhat reasonable price. I’m most of the way to a finished power supply replacement design.

I will look into using a set of DC-DC meanwell supplies, there’s a ton of space to work with!

I did some more cleaning, the machine is starting to really look like new!

 

[1ajs]

 

[Terri Kennedy]

CPU1 and MMPU1 found! I might need to put a bounty on the CPU 2 card lol

I managed to snag both off of eBay at a somewhat reasonable price. I’m most of the way to a finished power supply replacement design.

I will look into using a set of DC-DC meanwell supplies, there’s a ton of space to work with!

I did some more cleaning, the machine is starting to really look like new!

That's an odd one. A S/130 should be (if I remember correctly*) a S/230 but with only 4 slots aside from the CPU. Your front panel discoloration doesn't match between the front panel and the expansion, but your internal chassis is definitely a S/230.

The LSSM has an S/120 with the following layout:

Slots 1-4 005-021082 Power Supply
Slot 5    005-017624 CPU, 128KW (out of 256KW possible), console SLU, RTC, firmware FPU
Slot 6    Empty
Slot 7    005-015289 9-track tape controller (for 6125, code name "Slingshot")
Slot 8    005-015551 disk controller (for 6234 50MB winchester, code name "Daisy")
Slot 9    005-017436 4241 QTY (Quad terminal multiplexor)

The parts catalog description for the LSSM CPU lists it as "S/20" which I think means it would either be used in an S/120 chassis (short box) or a S/220 chassis (tall box).

I don't know if the PSU is compatible; the CPU isn't (the S/x30 had a 2-board CPU set at a minimum). The peripheral controllers and drives should work in your system. Hopefully this gives you some part / model numbers to search for.

What is odd is that the S/x00 and the S/x30 had hardware front panels, while the S/x20 and the S/x40 had software front panel emulators with just a reset and boot toggle. The S/280 also has a software front panel emulator. I refused to believe that the S/280 existed until it was staring me in the face. There was also apparently a C/380, even rarer. My disbelief is because DG would kill off older products when new ones were introduced, and the S/280 is definitely newer than the MV/8000.

I stopped paying attention to new DG CPUs because I'd built the Frankenclipse, starting with a S/200 and ending up with a S/230-class CPU, except about 30% faster than an S/230. I was running RDOS with 64 terminals of XBASIC (32 in FG and 32 in BG, and BG would shut down at night to run batch jobs using other language compilers, with the results placed in the user's directories before 8 AM when BG went back to being XBASIC). I was running the whole OS off a 4MB AOS paging disk (fixed heads) and a 6061 "washing machine" that held 192MB. I wasn't interested in running AOS, or the MV CPU series. It was funny when FS would come to fix a peripheral and insist on running CPU diagnostics first (the official DG policy was that the CPU was my problem - they even gave me a box of blank proto boards and the RDOS and XBASIC sources to make me go away). They'd fail, and I'd say "You have to run the S/230 diagnostics" and they'd comment that the CU front panel said it was an S/200 and had bulbs instead of LEDs. I'd tell them to run EMORT L after patching some timing loops to deal with my faster CPU, then get on with fixing the peripheral I called for service on.

There's an S/280 at the LSSM which is a good candidate for restoration - processor cabinet, 2 tape drive cabinets, a DG disk drive (for hardware maintenance eligibility) and at least two Fujitsu 8" ESMD drives.

* My personal memory never had ECC, and the parity logic is failing, so take this with a grain of salt.

 

[cullyrichard]

I was able to find a CPU and associated card set from an S/200 or S/230. Based on some preliminary work, it would appear that the backplane will actually be, for the most part, compatible. Installing the S/230 CPU may require some minor, completely reversible modification to make it work. I have the chassis apart to do some minor backplane work and cleanup of the metal pieces. I have opted to replace all of the supplies with a set of Mean Well supplies to make the machine both easier to move and more reliable. I don't have the original supplies, so I will build an adapter card and do some wire wrap.

The 16 slot backplane of the S/230 has some extra signals that don't seem to actually go anywhere. I think these were largely used for FPU and EAU functions, which I will not use. The long term solution is to get a S/130 CPU but those seems to be incredibly elusive. The S/230 cpu should work without the extended functions of the S/130.

At any rate, progress is being made to a restored and complete eclipse of some sort.