[Simh] NH14 and TR01

[Timothe Litt]

On 27-Feb-16 17:23, Paul Koning wrote:
>> On Feb 27, 2016, at 5:00 PM, Timothe Litt <litt at ieee.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Timothe, 
>>>
>>>
>>> This list that you published an excerpt from, it it available online somewhere? 
>>>
>>> I am curious to understand what the DEC options NH14 and TR01 were?
>>>
>>> Are they listed there as well?
>>>
>>
>> <cgigidfc.png>
>>
>> I don't have info on the NH04...but we know that N* is "pulse height analysis equipment".  But if we look elsewhere, we
>> find:
>> <icafdbha.png>
> Pulse height analysis sounds like the sort of device you use to do gamma ray spectrography -- scintillators attached to photomultipliers, whose outputs are pulses with height proportional to the gamma energy.
>
>> So the NH14 is a dual 12-bit Analog-Digital converter, built by DEC's computer special systems group in Merrimack, NH.
> CSS was in Nashua, next doors to the FAA "Boston Center" ARTCC facility.  It's now partly a billiards club and partly a vacuum technology company.  Merrimack was the home of "Comm Engineering", RSTS development, Typeset-8, Typeset-11, Assist-11, WPS-8, PDP-15 software support, Telephone Products Group (later Ultrix engineering) before that moved to Nashua Spit Brook Road.  Merrimack was the first large DEC facility in NH, and according to legend, the place where Ken Olsen took Mass. governor Tsongas with the DEC helicopter, saying "this is where we're moving all of DEC unless you do something about Mass. taxes".  But he did not follow up on that threat.
>
> 	paul
>
CSS was also in Merimack.   And the design engineer for this device was,
at last report, located there.  That's why I
wrote CSS in MK rather than Nashua.

I worked with CSS in both buildings - and before that when they were
called DAS (DEC Advanced Systems).

DAS did the early work on the PDP-10 networking that became ANF-10,
which was the first 'DECnet'.  And Typeset-10.

But they were known for customer specials.  They branched out to
low-volume products to increase
their ROI. 

Merrimack was unique in that if you went out the back lot, you could use
a private entrance onto the
toll highway.  You could get tokens at the guard desk - at about 1/2 the
price of going the long way around.

I think I still have one of those tokens; you had to buy two, and I made
an odd number of trips.

Pulse Height Analysis was the category assigned to the N class part
numbers way back.  The vocabulary was different
then.  DEC modules included Pulse Amplifiers and Pulse delay lines.  The
KA10 was built with asynchronous logic
(no clock).  It's more likely that the name came from that - but I don't
know.  It's actually quite odd that the NH14
ended up there, as A* was used for DA/AD converters.  It's possible that
someone slipped NH as a play on the
state past the chief engineer's office.    Or it's possible that you're
on the right track and the application area
was one of the national labs.



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