I was Product Support Manager for Nuclear Data in the 1970's-80's. The ND6600 terminal was, as you have noted, a shell. It was designed to interface with an ND6600 computer-based multi-channel analyzer system, and was typically used for gamma ray spectroscopy. The ND6600 mca was a rack mounted system consisting of 2-4 LSI-11 microcomputers. One LSI-11 ran the custom-designed MIDAS operating system, specifically optimized for control of high-speed, real-time gamma ray detectors. The other 1, 2, or 3 LSI-11's each ran a single "DAS" (display-and-acquisition) subsystem, which collected and processed the data stream from its dedicated detector. The LSI's, and other custom display and analog-to-digital conversion hardware, ran on a then-state-of-the-art 6 mHz, parallel 32-bit communication bus (the COMBus). The system was capable of processing very high speed real-time data. The ND6600 was capable of running FORTRAN software for data analysis, a real breakthrough for a spectroscopy system at the time.
The ND-812 was a prior generation PDP-8 clone, with a few real-time data tweaks, which powered the ND4400 MCA system, a 1-detector spectroscopy system. The ND4400 system could be programmed in ND-812 assembler (like PDP-8 assembler -- boy was it a challenge!), in a custom interpretive BASIC-like language called NUTRAN, and eventually in FORTRAN (which didn't work very well). I used and programmed the ND-4400 while an employee of the University of Michigan, before I joined Nuclear Data.
The ND600's were not data terminals, but rather each was a stand-alone gamma ray spectroscopy system. Each was powered by an LSI-11. The ND600 had a dedicated, function-oriented keyboard (not ASCII), and was capable only of collecting and doing fairly basic analysis of spectra. The ND600 was a design masterpiece, but a market failure. It was superseded by the ND66 MCA, which used the exact same architecture, but replaced the function keyboard with an ASCII keyboard, and which became the most successful product of its type at least through the end of the 1980's
Hope you find the information useful.
Wow, that was great!
All my ND stuff was obtained from The Black Hole, a surplus store in Los Alamos, NM, before they closed the business. When I got the ND6600 home and realized it was an empty shell, I went back and obtained all the Nuclear Data branded stuff I could find, including some ND branded NIM boards for the ND600.
Since this stuff was laying around The Black Hole for who knows how long, I can't be certain that all the ND boxes I got all go together. It could be that the peripheral boxes and boards I obtained were for the LSI-11 based system and that the LSI-11 portion was bought by someone else and the stuff was just in the same pile as the ND812 simply because it was all that characteristic "Hulk" green that ND used for their equipment.
From what you say about the ND600s, should I expect to find an LSI-11 board somewhere in the cabinet? I don't think I disassembled one of these as far as I did for the ND6600 terminal. I just assumed that it would be similarly empty, although I did learn about the nuclear instrumentation module standard while researching them.
Is there any chance that you or some of your former coworkers might have any printed material (documentation, manuals, brochures, price lists, service information, etc.) for Nuclear Data products laying around in your basement, garage or attic? It has been really hard finding information on these machines and they are really quite interesting.
My main focus is preserving the history of computer graphics and vertically integrated solutions like those in scientific and engineering applications are an important part of that story, but being such specialized and expensive systems, it is difficult to reconstruct their story as an outsider.
Thanks again for sharing what you know about these machines!
