For those with the finest tastes in old computers!

Latest revision: Tuesday, October 17, 2006

This is a web page devoted to PERQ graphics workstations, the first definitive commercial graphics workstations. This web page, and associated file archive, were created for my fellow PERQ Fanatics and PERQ hackers, and others, who are mad enough to still share a common interest in these fine machines.

Latest PERQ News:

• This page was resurrected from its original home at Bob Davis's web site after his sudden death, and in his honor. Bob and I did a lot of research on the Perqs, but he was far more persistent and dedicated than I. Without his efforts, much of the information on this site would have been lost or, at best, would be hopelessly distributed across the net. - Bill von Hagen

FAQs pertaining to PERQs

There are several PERQ FAQs which have been created, each addressing different PERQ related issues, which can be found here. These include: my original PERQ general FAQ in ASCII format, the HTML version of the General FAQ, the excellently hackish PERQ hardware FAQ by Dr. Tony Duell, and the very informative PERQ Programming FAQ by Iain A. F. Flemming:

• The original PERQ General FAQ---ASCII text version.
• Hypertext version of the PERQ General FAQ; thanks to Bill von Hagen for his work on HTMLing my General FAQ! Remember, check back here for the most recent version of the FAQ, which will remain in ASCII text format for now. :-)
• The PERQ Hardware FAQ by Dr. Tony Duell
• The PERQ Programming FAQ by Iain A. F. Fleming. A must read for PERQ programming.
• The PERQ mini FAQ from Dr. Tony Duell

Other PERQish Documents

Read my PERQ Historical and Technical Reference Guide, which is over two-hundred pages long and still incomplete. It was written over a decade ago and updated a little bit recently.

Read the PERQ CPU Technical Reference Manual by Dr. Tony Duell---a PERQ hacker extraordinare, a true genius, which is an excellent resource for understanding the details of how the PERQ CPU works. An updated version from Tony is planned.

More PERQish text file documents...

You may enyoy reading some interesting, useful and PERQ-related text files:

• 3Prose.text: Documentation that I wrote for the 3Prose document processing software... it's most likely very incomplete; it's just what I wrote while attempting to figure out how to use 3Prose so as to have something to use with the PERQs for document processing---before I found a copy of IDOCS Mint to use for typesetting documents. Does anyone know where the original 3Prose documentation can be found?
• 5.25in-floppy: Dr. Tony Duell's instructions for replacing PERQ 8" floppy drive with a 5.25" floppy drive
• How-a-PERQ-PERQs.text: Description, from an ICL PERQ demo, of how a PERQ PERQs.
• Xmas-lights-on-a-PERQ: How to use microcode to control blinking lights attached to the PERQlink port (From Dr. Tony Duell)
• centronics-interface.text: Plans for a PERQ GPIB to Centronics interface (again, more excellent hacking from Tony!)
• intro-to-PERQ-microcode-1: Introduction to PERQ Microcoding (1 of 3 - yet again, more great PERQ hacking info. from Tony who also wrote parts 2 and 3 below)
• intro-to-PERQ-microcode-2: Introduction to PERQ Microcoding (2 of 3)
• intro-to-PERQ-microcode-3: Introduction to PERQ Microcoding (3 of 3)
• joke-played-on-perq-haters: A joke that was played on PERQ haters
• keyboard-codes.text: PERQ keyboard codes (I think you can guess who the PERQ hacker was who wrote this (Tony)).
• obtaining-obsolete-amd-chips: An (obsolete?) article about where to get them
• perq-song: A song written by Tony explaining how a PERQ PERQs.
• perq2-power-up-steps: Before powering up a PERQ 2, for the first time, or if it's been moved, or has not been used in quite some time, please read this valuable info. from Dr. Tony Duell; it might very well save your PERQ from a traumatic disaster!
• raster_op_song: A song written by Tony about the PERQ's rasterOp circuitry

PERQ Sound Files

A very few speak (.spk) files for the PERQ: daisy1, phon1, sing1. Although the creators of the PERQs were innovators in comptuter-related audio, the PERQ workstations didn't benefit much from that and the audio quality of the PERQs, as far as I can tell, is quite disappointing. The PERQs also lack the necessary hardware for recording audio, and I understand that external hardware must to be hacked onto the PERQs in order to record audio on the PERQs.

PERQ Graphics Files

Some PERQ graphics files are archived here, such as:

• Cursors and Animated Cursors: .cursor and .animate files
• Fonts: .kst files
• Picture files: .pic files

PERQ TCP/IP Networking

Some TCP/IP software existed, but I've never found any complete working TCP/IP software for the PERQs. However, I did find some non-functional TCP/IP software for PERQs running the Accent OS on an old tape, which I hacked on a bit in some spare time. Although I didn't get it to to much, it may still be useful to someone.

PERQ LispKit

PERQdisk RT-11 Interchange Software

PERQdisk V1.0 and V2.0, written by Dr. Tony Duell. This software allows one to read and write PERQ "interchange" formate (RT-11) floppies on a PC.

Centronics and I2C drivers for the PERQ

Yet more useful software for the PERQs from Dr. Tony Duell! :-) Note: this software is for the POS operating system.

• Centronics drivers for the PERQ: centronics_dist.tar.gz
• PERQ I2C drivers and test programs: i2c_dist.tar.gz

Create POS G.6 Boot and Run Floppies

The following scripts are something I wrote for creating POS boot and run floppies for the PERQs:

• For creating run floppies
• For creating boot floppies

The Alt.sys.perq Archive

The archive of the Alt.sys.perq newsgroup from the very beginning. Note that this archive is not 100-percent complete. For about a few weeks, UUNET had stopped carrying the a.s.p newsgroup, but I was able to save some of the messages from another system (they're in the file named asp.digex, or something like that). Also, there had been another UUCP interruption and not all of the messages appeared to be arriving at mystica, but I did attempt archiving them on another system; those are in files named something like asp.umbc. So, aside from a very few messages, almost everything from the early days of Alt.sys.perq should be archived (hopefully!).

Most of the a.s.p articles are in groups of 100 messages; they really should be sorted through, so as to note what the dates of the first and last messages in them are.

PERQ Games

A few PERQ games (for POS, IIRC):

• Life: life.pas.Z
• Tetris: new-tetris.tar.Z

Kermit for the PERQs

PERQ kermit sources. I don't recall which of the following is what; they may or may not be quite similar: perqkermits.tar.gz and pqk.tar.gz.

Assorted PERQ Utilities

• POS utilities that I wrote for chopping up and printing UNIX news and mailbox files on a PERQ: the ChopPrint Utils V1.0: choppr10.tar.Z
• POS sed utility by Malcolm Shute: sed.shar.Z
• POS sort utility by Malcolm Shute: sort.pas.Z

Other PERQish Web Sites

There are also some other PERQ-related web pages on the 'net that you'll most likely wish to visit:

• Peter Maydell's PERQ web page which contains some very useful information, such as how to park the heads on a PERQ-1's 14" Shugart hard drive.
  
  
• PERQ related software, firmware and PDF's from Al Kossow's excellent Bitsavers computer preservation archive.
  
  
• More to hopefully be added soon.