Tektronics 4404 AI Workstation

[Adam Billyard]

Does anybody out there have, or know where to find, hardware information
about this machine.  I understand it was a bit of a disaster in the
market place and was essentially withdrawn. I got it for 50 quid so I'm
not complaining.

It has a NS32081 floating point chip in it, but I have no information as
to how its mapped into memory.  The OS access to the FP hardware is
through a trap and about .5k of code before getting to the actual
hardware, giving the blistering performance of 3500 flops! The sad thing
is that the NS32081 actually gives quite respectable performance (for
its time).


Also, how do you go about installing your own trap handlers on UN*X
machines.  I mean 'real' trap handlers not just using signal().  Do I
just write to /dev/kmem in the exception tables?

Any information you've got would be welcome.

	Cheers,
		Adam.