90s IDT (mips) eval boards: manuals? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2023, 09:14:51 pm
content: I just realized that all the manuals for the IDT and Algorithmic 90s and 2000s development boards have been lost. All the links of the various MIPS-linux wikis are broken.SeehereAlgorithmics used to be a small English consulting company. In 2002 the little company was bought by MIPS Technologies, Inc. and subsequently became MIPS UK. Algorithmics was making a GNU-based toolchain, evaluation boards and consulting services.For a few Algorithmics boards there was/is an old port for NetBSD/MIPS, namely that was known as "algor".---Does anyone happen to have a copy of these manuals?p.s.the wikipedia says wrong and very bad things about the MIPS Atlas board: although it's thue that the "galileo" CPU modules were bugged in hw, all the following MIPS 32 have been corrected, I own two boards with several CPU modules (MIPS32R1/BE, MIPS32R2/BE MIPS64R2/BE) and I never had any problem!

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2023, 09:31:40 am
content: as IDT is no more in business with MIPS, [ur=https://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/IDT_SIM]IDT/SIM: yet another great piece of software that is vanished

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2023, 09:55:52 am
content: I am afraid much information has been lost.

author: alm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2023, 10:42:59 am
content: Did you check the Internet Archive or repositories like BitSavers?

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2023, 08:45:12 am
content: Quote from: alm on August 06, 2023, 10:42:59 amyup, also emailed to several old dev mailing lists.it seems that nobody cares anymore.I received two constructive answers yesterday, anyway, with one of the user manual I need attached by email.Not enough(1), but better than nothing.(1) there are some quirks on chips, not well-documented by the official public documentation, well known on the reserved documentation under confidentiality agreement, and somehow known among devs, but we are talking about early 2000s and they didn't take any notes, and don't want to talk or just don't remember, so ... it's "lost information" at the moment.

author: alm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2023, 09:14:22 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 07, 2023, 08:45:12 amAre you sure? The first link on the wiki ishttp://www.idt.com/docs/79EB332_MA_24147.pdf,which no longer works. But if I type this URL in the wayback machine on archive.org and go to 2003, I get what looks like a 44 page evaluation board manual. You could download them and store them in a more accessible place.It might be easier to open the wiki page in the wayback machine rather than copying individual links.

author: alm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2023, 09:49:03 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 07, 2023, 09:41:27 amWhat about the link I posted? Was that just the lucky single manual that got archived?

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2023, 09:54:40 am
content: Quote from: alm on August 07, 2023, 09:14:22 amI am sure, it seems all the oldest IDT and Algo boards are gone, and things like MIPS Atlas are gone too, plus all the notes about their chips and quirks.Then, there are some ghost links likethis, but when you try to dowload ... surprise, it's ZERO byte.