Western Electric Component Databooks?

[segaloco]

I was fortunate to secure the attached Western Electric Linar Components databook from an eBay auction some time ago, it contains things like op amp and comparators, and appears to have been shipped to engineers and R&D folks throughout the Bell System in much the same way as National, Fairchild, Ti, etc. databooks were offered up to general EE shops. Is anyone aware of any such WECo databooks having been preserved elsewhere or does anyone happen to have any such books bumping around in their libraries? I'm certainly interested in contributing the information to any WECo component databasing efforts as well as eventually scanning the thing. As for seeking other books, I'd love to do a component-level analysis of the MACTutor single-board computer one of these days, it's got Ti, Intel, and AMD components on the board but also several "WE" components in addition to the MAC-8 core as well. Thanks for any info!

 

[jlang]

I would think that's pretty rare.
Make sure Al Kossow gets a shot at it.

 

[Al Kossow]

you might try the connections museum
they are into all things bell shaped

 

[segaloco]

Ah heck thanks Al, I hadn't even considered them for things this far afield from telephones-proper. I might have a work reason to head to Seattle in the coming months, so will try and stop by if that happens.

 

[segaloco]

Good news, snagged a few more of these, this time 1973 editions of both the Linear and Digital Familes manuals! If anyone has any questions about anything in any of these databooks please reach out, I'm probably not kicking off significant scanning again until the weather turns in the Autumn. Summer has just been too nice...

 

[segaloco]

Had some time this evening so decided to finally do some scans I've been meaning to for a while.

MAC-4 Specification Sheet : Bell Laboratories : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The MAC-4 is a one-chip, totally self-contained microcomputer primarily designed for controller system applications. It is implemented in CMOS technology for...

archive.org

This is the MAC-4 Specification Sheet (Preliminary, 11/78). The MAC-4 is a 4-bit microcomputer that was used in numerous telephone applications such as PBX systems and central switching peripherals. Much early info about this and its earlier 8-bit relative the MAC-8 can be read in the 1976 BTL/WE Microcomputer Symposium papers (https://bitsavers.org/pdf/westernElectric/BTL_WE_Microcomputer_Symposium_Dec76.pdf). It can also be read about in brief in the BSTJ (https://bitsavers.org/magazines/Bell_System_Technical_Journal/BSTJ_V58N04_197904.pdf page 153 in the PDF).

This is only a part of the documentation Bell Laboratories produced. Luckily with the MAC-8 documentation I found this stashed with there was also an ordering sheet that lists:

MAC-4 Programmer Manual
MAC-4 User Manual
MAC-MATE Manual

With the latter being a development board much like the MAC-TUTOR is for the MAC-8. A prototyping module, "PROMAC" is also mentioned in the specification sheet, but these are the only additional MAC-4 mentions I have found in this particular set of documents. I've got a stack of Dataphone modems I intend to open up soon to see if any of them might have a MAC-4 inside. Pipe dream but I'd love to find one and figure out how to use it.

212B MAC-8 Single-Chip Microprocessor Package Data Sheet : Bell Laboratories : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The MAC-8 is a single chip, bus-structured general purpose microprocessor with an 8-bit data bus and a 16-bit address bus.PRELIMINARY DRAFT

archive.org

And since I got it scanned while preparing this one, have also the 212B MAC-8 Single-Chip Microprocessor Package Data Sheet (Preliminary, 09/78).

The MAC-8 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was similarly used in a number of Western Electric products such as switching systems and modems. This one is a little more documented already, what with many MAC-TUTORs having surfaced over the years. I happen to have two of them, both fully functional as far as I can tell. It was with one of those units that I got these and a few other documents.

Additional documentation for the MAC-8 includes:

MAC-TUTOR Reference Manual (https://bitsavers.org/pdf/westernElectric/mac-8/PA-800515_MAC-8_TUTOR_Jul79.pdf)
MAC-TUTOR Self-Training Manual (https://bitsavers.org/pdf/westernElectric/mac-8/PA-800516_MAC8_SelfTraining.pdf)
MAC-8 Hexadecimal Coding Chart (https://bitsavers.org/pdf/westernElectric/mac-8/PA-800517_MAC8_Opcode_Dec78.pdf)
MAC-8 Processor User's Manual (Unscanned, but I have one I plan on scanning)
MAC-8 Programming Manual (Unscanned)
PLAID User Manual (Unscanned)
PLAID Hardware Manual (Unscanned)

With the PLAID being another MAC-8 development system. Attached is a bit of PLAID information from the MAC-8 Processor User's Manual.

Aside from all of this, the only other documentation (outside of thus far esoteric BSTJ mentions) I have in my library on these are in some Bell Labs UNIX 5.0 and SVR2 manuals, specifically BTL-internal manuals with a number of extra utilities. Among these are "m8" and "m4" prefixed development tools like compilers and assemblers (e.g. m8cc, m4as, m4ld, m8sim). I eventually intend to write my own replacements for these tools to work with the MAC-TUTOR and hopefully eventually a MAC-MATE, PROMAC, and/or PLAID. Unfortunately the MAC-4 assembly language remains obscure, the specification sheet only has descriptions of the operations and their parameters, not mnemonics or any other syntactical details. If it's anything like MAC-8, it resembled C more than a conventional assembly language. Bell Labs was experimenting with designing extremely C-like CPU architectures at this time, so something a little more C-ish than assembly-ish to express low-level operations makes sense.

Anywho, enjoy, certainly interested in other folks's thoughts and experiences with early WECo CPU technology!

P.S. If you want more MAC-8 info, check out this page:

The Bell Laboratories MAC Tutor / BELLMAC-8 Microprocessor

Hopefully as I experiment with mine I can supplement the information.

 

[segaloco]

And here's another little bit: https://gitlab.com/segaloco/pwb5btl_man

I've started a troff-reconstruction of the BTL Release 5.0 UNIX manuals which include among other things tools for these CPUs. This round I did the MAC-4 pages which can be found in the above repository. There are also pages for the MAC-8 UNIX utilities as well as an SGS targeting "BASIC-16", a generalized 16-bit "starting place" SGS for platforms such as the 8086. I don't know much about BASIC-16 (not to be confused with other so-named products), but it had something to do with Bell Labs projects using 8086 and other 16-bit microprocessors in the mid-to-late 70s.

Anywho, I intend to transcribe the MAC-8 utilities soon, which should pretty well round out descriptions of the development environments for MAC-8 save for the PLAID system mentioned above. What I wouldn't give for one of those boxes...you can probably use it with the MAC-TUTOR by connecting the socket line there where the MAC-8 on the board is slotted. There actually were two operating systems developed for the MAC-8, ROS and m8os, according to: http://ferretronix.com/march/sbc/mactutor/mactutor_09.jpg and http://ferretronix.com/march/sbc/mactutor/mactutor_12.jpg

Sadly I don't think the rest of those papers are scanned. I would be particularly interested in the latter as the synopsis indicates the document includes the source code to m8os.

Here's hoping getting some of this out there shakes some other Bell Labs CPU information loose out in the world.

 

[RCourtney]

Anything on this IC: 41KC in your silicon books from Western Electric?