Author: joe.farr@gmail.com

  • Model 1 Technical Manual

    This looks like the first release of the what we used to call in the UK, “The field engineering service manual”. Even though it refers to the earliest 8870 machines it still contains a wealth of information including details of the CPU instruction set that stayed basically the same for all 16-bit CPUs until the…

  • Summary of I/O card assignments

    I’ve never seen this manual in the UK and I’m not entirely sure what it’s attempting to document. What is interesting is that it’s referred to a “Field Engineering Manual”… and these manuals contain all the really cool stuff.

  • Description of the program interfaces

    I’ve never seen this manual in the UK and I’m not entirely sure what it’s attempting to document. I need to study this one in more detail but parts of it look like they are describing how system memory is used. What is interesting is that it’s referred to a “Field Engineering Manual”… and these…

  • Error Messages

    I’ve never seen this manual in the UK which is a shame as it looks like it would have been very useful, specifically the information around the dreaded TRAP message.