Donor: Cadmus
This Intel 86/380 computer was given to the observatory by Bob Noyce in 1983, when the observatory was under construction and Intel was still making complete computer systems. It served as the observatory’s primary data acquisition and analysis machine until 1996. The Intel computer handled almost all computing tasks except control of the telescope, including the digitizing of signals from instruments, control of instrumentation, acquisition of images, and a wide variety of data analysis and display tasks.
The hardware consists of two units; one contains the processor, memory, display controller, I/O, and frame grabber circuit boards, while the other contains the hard disk and an 8” floppy disk drive. The system has 768 kB of memory and 35 MB of disk space. The Intel 8086 processor runs at 5 MHz. In spite of these limitations it served observatory users well. User interaction with the computer is through a terminal, a printer, a color video display, and a light pen that provides mouse-like functions in conjunction with the video display.
The 86/380 is a single-user system that runs Intel’s iRMX operating system. Almost all of its application software was written at Grinnell, mostly in Pascal, which was the language that Grinnell students learned in computing courses at that time.
At the time of its removal from service the 86/380 was relatively healthy and a brief document was prepared to assist anyone who might wish to bring it back to life.
--R. Cadmus 7/27/13
