Bi-Tran Six

[OhWhatA_Year1970]

Bi-tran Six, Used one in 1970-71 10th grade computer science class. I think it could do math with a result up to 31. I remember something about a bit being used to designate negative number. And some functions like greater-than and/or equal-to. My teacher used it to demontrate programing in machine language. I remember the pull out core memory boards and it was on a rolling platform. Pretty big for what it's capable of. Wow, that's a long time back.

[jlmartin34]

In high schoo,l circa 1970, we had one of these we used to learn programming. It had registers you loaded with binary data and program instructions, also in binary.
The switches on the bottom were to increment or decrement to the next instruction. You would enter the binary data by turning on the lights on the front panel
then click the switch to enter the instruction/data. Other panel lights would show the contents of the registers and program memory. At 16 it was fun to play with and was
my first introduction to programming.

[granzeier]

When I was in the Navy, going through electronics school (one of them, I can't remember which) in Millington, Tennessee, somewhere between September 1977 and September 1978, we were taught about computers using a computer trainer called the "ComTran-10", or something like that.

I don't remember much about it, except we programmed it in machine code. Has anyone heard of it?

Dr. Pepper,

I also used the ComTran-10 in Computer School, Keesler AFB, MS back in 1979-80. I remember the hex code for Manual Input, it was F0, that sticks in my mind because our instructor told us that "now if anyone asks you if you know what F-O means, you can tell them 'yes, it means Manual Input'"

I would dearly love to run across one of those or even any further information on them.

Art

[Phattdad144]

The first time I came across the Bi-tran six was in 79 at Community college. We had to purchase the maintenance manual for the course. Unfortunately I lost it in a move in 04. The Air Force tech school at lowery AFB used the Bi-tran six for some basic computer training.
I remember it being a base six number system and designed to teach CPU workings. All the registers were displayed on on the front with switchable lights. All the circuit boards could be extended from the top and measured test points during operation. It was very basic coding. one of the routines we coded was multiplying two numbers. The instruction set could only add two numbers. Even at that time microprocessors had a multiplication instruction.
The Bi-tran six was a real good tool for teaching how a CPU works that's about it.

[lane29]

i found a picture of it thats prety cool looking, im amazed it is working