Alpha/LSI - Cambridge Electronic Design

This may be a universe of one (survivor): A Computer Automation Alpha-LSI computer attached to a Cambridge Electronic Design data acquisition system which records data (directly?) to “CED509” floppy disks.

Usage

from autoarchaeologist.vendor.computer_automation import cambridge_electronic_design
…
self.add_examiner(*cambridge_electronic_design.ALL)

Notes

The encoding of the filenames is still unknown

Data is stored “corner-turned” or “90° rotated”.

We speculate that 16 bit words are transferred between the computer/data acquisition and sixteen one-bit shift registers in parallel, but those shift registers are arranged serially while transferring to the floppydisk.

Speculating further: With two sets of sixteen shift registers, and a suitably chosen sector interleave, the data acquisition would be able to stream data directly to an entire floppy disk track without computer intervention.

The data on our artifacts seems consistent with this speculation.

Test input

• COMPANY/COMPUTER_AUTOMATION

Documentation

None