6386E front display and slot

[~XT6561110~Frank McGee~C23~L25~6326~]

In article <341 at denwa.uucp> denwa!jimmy at anes.ucla.edu (Jim Gottlieb) writes:
>We have several AT&T 6386E (Olivetti M380) floor-stand computers.  Two
>questions:
>1)	Is it possible to access the front display to use it for our
>	own status messages?  If so, how?

To do this, you'd need to write a unix or MSDOS device driver for the
approprate environment.  The pertinent hardware information you'd need
to write the driver is in the "6386E WGS TECHNICAL REFERENCE MANUAL."
This document is orderable from CIC (Customer Information Center) at
1-800-432-6600.  Cost is about $150, and they take plastic.

One of my cohorts says though that once you dig through the info, that
you find out that it can only display 16 canned messages (ie, there's
no way to send it an arbitrary string).  Basically it involves putting
a byte into an I/O register (the pointer to the message) and it
displays that particular message that's been burned into the ROM.

Also, writing device drivers is not a good place to learn C.  You
should be pretty C and Unix knowledgeable before you attempt to write
one.

>2)	The card that drives this display plugs into the front-most 
>	slot.  I asked the hotline if that slot can be used for regular
>	cards instead (we can always use extra slots).  He said that
>	the slot is listed as a "modified 16-bit slot" but he did not
>	know what that meant.  Does anyone know if this slot can be
>	used for normal boards?

My guess (and this is strictly a guess) is that it looks like an AT slot
with a few extra fingers.  I just tried our disk controller in it, and
it was atleast able to boot Unix.

Keep in mind that when you remove the console card though you lose all
the front panel features except for the power switch.  The reset
switch, speaker, speaker volume control, and key lock all run through
the console card.

Hope this answers your question,

-- 
Frank McGee, AT&T
Tier 3 Complementary Channel Sales Support
attmail!fmcgee