[GreenKeys] Irv Hoff and Datapoint

[Jack Rubin]

Jerry,

Thanks for this info -
 
> Irv put the first computer on rtty on the ham bands in the
> late 1960's.  It was the Datapoint 2200, which he paid over
> 10K for while the rest of us struggled to pay $400 bucks for 
> our little Altairs/Imsai's, etc. 

I don't think Irv quite paid "list price" for the 2200! Also, the date must
have been a little bit later since the 2200 was only prototyped in 1969 and
released to production in 1971, first as a 4K machine and soon after as a
16K machine. I've heard that Irv was using a PDP8 for rtty (before the
Datapoint?). Anybody know if this is correct?

One of my hopes is to someday run rtty on my Datapoint, so any information
related directly to Irv's setup - especially code! - would really be
welcomed.

> I always assumed he bought that particular one because of Vic Poor,
> who was a VP at Datapoint at the time (if I recall that correctly)
> was Irv's good friend.. He wrote software that would run on his 
> Datapoint computer and then wrote other versions that ran on 8080's
> for the rest of us. 
 
> The thing that always amazed me was how all the 8080 software 
> he wrote on that thing, he was never able to run any of it. 

This is very cool info - obviously, since the Datapoint was essentially
code-compatible with the Intel 8008 it was also a (barely) adequate
development platform for 8080 code.

> He developed a program to download a lot of the stuff using 
> the Intel hex format, and then decode it back into running 
> object code which we then used. I must have yards and yards 
> of paper with hex dumps on it, along with the  source code 
> still out in my archives.

I sure would like to see some of this material - what time frame would this
be? Do you still have correspondence as well as code?

> Later on in years when I got my hands on some Frederick TU's 
> along with all the documentation, it became evident that he had
> used a lot of ideas from their line of hardware to develop first
> the old TTL2 and then the later ST-6 line of terminal units. 

This would probably have been due to Jonathan Schmidt's input. Again, if any
of this documentation is still available, I'd very much like to have the
opporunity to scan it.

> I built the 2nd or 3rd ST-6 after he finished the design.  Bill 
> Sherwood, w6fby, ugly wired up the first one based on Irv's 
> designs, Irv built the second one based on the 'board set' he 
> and George Hutchison worked up for the rest of us, and I built 
> up the 3rd unit while at George's home in Santa Clara, CA one
> weekend all those many years ago.
> 
> I actually just 'found' my old home-built version in the 
> home of the ham I had given it to some 40 years ago.  I 
> rescued it and dusted it off and am planning on firing it
> up to see if it still works!

Please keep us posted.
 
> He was a very brilliant person and we all lost a heck of a 
> resource when he died.

Amen, 

Jack