Kontron PSI 80

KONTRON PSI Ψ 80 D / W

The Kontron PSI Ψ 80 was a compact microcomputer model, manufactured in the early 1980s by what was then KONTRON Mikrocomputer GmbH, Eching near Munich, a forerunner of today's Kontron AG .

The device was offered in two housing variants, as PSI Ψ 80, a desktop computer with a built-in 9-inch CRT screen, and under the designation PSI Ψ 82 as an industrial computer for installation in a 19-inch rack with a separate 12-inch monitor . Both housings were characterized by the built-in slide-in frame that could accommodate modules and interfaces in European format . The computer was designed with the ECB bus to accommodate subprocessor assemblies, real-time clock, digital and analog input / output interfaces, IEC / IEEE488 bus controllers and other accessories. The areas of application were u. a. Industrial control, laboratory automation, training, technical-scientific use, measurement data acquisition, process control, software development and office use are provided.

The computer was also offered as the Kienzle CC-9010 from what was then Kienzle Apparate GmbH .

hardware

The housing of the PSI Ψ 80 had the dimensions 455 × 355 × 270 mm (W / D / H) and weighed approx. 15 kg. The central unit was designed as a highly integrated computer assembly with expansion options. As a processor , a was Zilog Z80 A used with a clock frequency of 4 MHz. Other features were:

64 KB RAM memory
16 KB separate image memory
graphics-capable image processor with a resolution of 512 × 256 pixels (non interlaced )
2 serial interfaces ( RS232C / 20mA , RS232C ) with Z80A-SIO
1 parallel interface ( Centronics ) with Z80A-PIO (optional)

8 timer / counter channels with Z80A-CTC

1 floppy disk controller for internal or external disk drives in 5-inch or 8-inch technology

Extensions for DMA , RS422 , modem , light pen etc.

The built-in monochrome screen was designed in green or optionally in amber and displayed 2,000 characters in 25 text lines with 80 characters in text mode. In graphics mode there were over 130,000 pixels in 256 picture lines with 512 points each.

A maximum of two floppy drives were integrated and up to four drives could be connected. As standard, they had a storage capacity of 308 KB (77 tracks) or 616 KB (2 × 77 tracks) for the PSI Ψ 80 / Q model series. The PSI 80 D / W5 model contained a hard disk with a capacity of 5 MB ( formatted ) instead of a second floppy disk drive . In addition, external hard drives in 8-inch format with a capacity of 10 or 20 MB were offered to be connected via the parallel interface.

software

Kontron equipped the PSI Ψ 80 computer with the company-specific KOS operating system, which offered compatibility with the system calls of CP / M 2.2 thanks to a software module , but which went far beyond this in terms of functionality. These included an advanced file management system and multitasking with foreground / background operation, for example spooling for printer output, data communication or application-specific subtasks. KOS managed up to 10 tasks which were processed with prioritization in cycles of 20 ms. Important properties of KOS were:

automatic memory management
Input / output functions via logical device assignment
File search across all connected mass storage devices
File size up to 8 MB
Medium capacity up to 64 MB
File attributes for write protection, erasure protection or password protection

The price of the PSI Ψ 80 included a package of standard software - a program for creating texts and software source code (PSI / EDITOR), software implemented as a driver or relocative object module for graphics display (PSI / GRAPH), plus PSI / ASM and PSI / LINK, macro assembler and linker for converting assembler programs and for linking program parts, as well as PSI / BASIC, an interpreter of the programming language BASIC with specific extensions and functions.

In addition, KONTRON offered separately licensed:

PSI / PASCAL, with which programs in the Pascal programming language were translated into an intermediate code that was executed by the PSI-PASCAL interpreter at runtime .
COBOL-80, a Cobol - compiler from Microsoft
BASIC-80, a BASIC interpreter from Microsoft
FORTRAN-80, a Fortran compiler from Microsoft
PSI / AUTOTEXT, a text formatting program
PSI / WORDSTAR, an adapted version of the most popular word processing program Wordstar from MicroPro at the time
PSI / PLOT, a software for displaying and printing graphics
PSI / MOD, software for data transmission via modem (requires the hardware option "modem interface")

Due to the extensive CP / M compatibility of KOS, the software available on the market for CP / M could be used, if necessary after adaptation, provided that it did not have a memory requirement of more than 50 KB.

Multi-user system KOBUS

On the basis of the PSI-80 systems and the KOS operating system, Kontron implemented the KOBUS multi-user system, a kind of file server solution. A PSI master station controlled the communication between the master and up to 16 PSI terminal stations. The master was an extended PSI computer with a hard disk, usually 20 MB, and an independently working KOBUS preprocessor as a subsystem to control the transfer and to support the hard disk management. PSI systems with their own mass storage device could be used as end devices, but also systems without mass storage devices (PSI Ψ 80 / TC) that booted from the central server. The connection to the network was made via the KOBUS connection (RS-422), which provided a transmission rate of 800 kBit / s via coaxial cable . The transfer between KOBUS and RAM was DMA- controlled.

swell

Brochure "PSI Ψ 80, the compact one for universal use", system description from KONTRON Microcomputer GmbH, 1982

literature

Kontron Elektronik GmbH: compact computer systems. Market & Technology, 1980.