[Oberon] FPGA Oberon vs Ceres

[Paul Reed]

Hi Andreas,

>> The Computer History Museum has a Ceres 1 and a Ceres 3.
>>
>>
>> https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/X2321.2002A
>> https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102674736
>> Of course anyone living within driving distance of the CHM can become
>> involved. Possibly restore a machine to working order and operate as
>> demonstration for visitors.
>
>
> PS: I occasionally drive by the Computer History Museum. So perhaps
> I should try to boot the Ceres computer there one day. If it still works.

No doubt you can help them with a bit of identification - I have a Ceres
3, but it looks like this one:

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102722173

I had to change the PCB-mounted real-time-clock battery after Pieter
Muller first rescued the machine for me (I've had similar simple
renovation success with an old Mac SE30 and a PowerMac 6100).  Apart from
that the Ceres 3 booted fine - but there's not a lot to go wrong, it's a
ROM and a RAMdisk, plus 720K (ie, non HD) 3.5" work floppies which Prof.
Gutknecht was able to help me with.

Pieter warned me some of the Ceres 3 serial interfaces were altered,
probably to program early FPGAs (in a circular piece of history!), so care
might need to be taken there.

Ceres 2 and 1 waaay harder.  One of ETH's Ceres 2s died while we were
preparing for Oberon Day 2011 [1].  By died, I mean the 5.25" ST506 hard
drive stopped working.  I believe Immo Noack is the expert - we were lucky
he was still working at ETH then.  But I think there are quite a few
ex-ETH people out in CA who might be able to help.

Cheers,
Paul

[1]
https://www.video.ethz.ch/conferences/2011/oberon/5879ee18-554a-4775-8292-3cf0293f5956.html
 +40min ish