Author Topic: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)  (Read 29173 times)

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Offline TheEPROM9Topic starter

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Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« on: April 21, 2015, 11:20:27 am »
DVW Microelectronics Husky:

These are from 1981 and are arguably the first portable computers, they are very rugged. I don't think there are meany of these left:







Husky Hunter 1/2:

These are far more well known and can be found every so often, they run on CP/M. I scanned the manual and it can be found Here: https://archive.org/details/HuskyHunterManual

Thanks to whoever uploaded it there =-)
not sure if my Mega account is even alive anymore.





















Other Husky's:






« Last Edit: March 17, 2019, 07:41:07 pm by TheEPROM9 »
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Offline Fraser

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2015, 12:08:41 pm »
I have an 'as new' Husky Hunter 2 that came with a 1980's Agema Thermovision 880 Thermal camera. IIRC it was used for temperature calculations, Isothermal measurements etc.

Sadly it is nothing more than a museum piece now, as is the thermal camera it services.

Well built though  :-+

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« Last Edit: April 21, 2015, 12:10:50 pm by Aurora »
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Offline TheEPROM9Topic starter

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #2 on: April 21, 2015, 03:37:50 pm »
I have an 'as new' Husky Hunter 2 that came with a 1980's Agema Thermovision 880 Thermal camera. IIRC it was used for temperature calculations, Isothermal measurements etc.

Sadly it is nothing more than a museum piece now, as is the thermal camera it services.

Well built though  :-+

Aurora

I did not know they were used with thermal cameras. I do have three which are completely rooted though. I thing one is due to memory. I did use mine at University to learn programming, converting C# to BASIC forced me to understand how the codes worked as well as how it was layed out. No one else understood my method, but it worked for me.
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Offline smjcuk

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #3 on: April 21, 2015, 04:23:56 pm »
I worked at a company that used them in the 1990s as crypto terminals. I spent a day in a lab freezing them and baking them in quick cycles. Used to slow down a bit after the freezing session. Was great fun.

I can't say much more about the tech details or I'll get bagged and tagged unfortunately.
 

Offline TheEPROM9Topic starter

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #4 on: April 21, 2015, 05:29:04 pm »
I worked at a company that used them in the 1990s as crypto terminals. I spent a day in a lab freezing them and baking them in quick cycles. Used to slow down a bit after the freezing session. Was great fun.

I can't say much more about the tech details or I'll get bagged and tagged unfortunately.

Nice, a lot were used for mi8ll projects the Rasper Missile Project being the most famous. Plus no data can be recovered off them due to the fact everything was stored on battery backed RAM. I have had people show images/videos of them in other civilian uses though. That might make a fun project doing cryptography on one and seeing how easy it is to crack. Hell you could link it to more modern equipment and use it as a key storage device that can wipe the key as soon as the system becomes compromised. I'm going into computer security so those sorts of areas intrest me.
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Offline smjcuk

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #5 on: April 21, 2015, 05:52:20 pm »
Yes it may have been related to the Rapier platform actually :)

Military crypto is mainly embarrassingly bad shit developed by the lowest bidder. They'll spend £100k on a formally proven compiler yet get idiots to then write a ton of shitty ADA which of course reimplements crypto engines with added special flaws to target an unverified embedded PowerPC core on an unverified FPGA connected to a bunch of DRAM without ECC... They have no idea what the hell they are doing and its scary. Mention Schneider's Applied Crypto book and they get a little nervous in case they have been found out...

I write software now in the commercial sector as there is far more clue there and that is saying something.

Crypto is interesting - good field to work in.
« Last Edit: April 21, 2015, 06:07:09 pm by smjcuk »
 

Offline TheEPROM9Topic starter

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #6 on: April 21, 2015, 09:21:40 pm »
Yes it may have been related to the Rapier platform actually :)

Military crypto is mainly embarrassingly bad shit developed by the lowest bidder. They'll spend £100k on a formally proven compiler yet get idiots to then write a ton of shitty ADA which of course reimplements crypto engines with added special flaws to target an unverified embedded PowerPC core on an unverified FPGA connected to a bunch of DRAM without ECC... They have no idea what the hell they are doing and its scary. Mention Schneider's Applied Crypto book and they get a little nervous in case they have been found out...

I write software now in the commercial sector as there is far more clue there and that is saying something.

Crypto is interesting - good field to work in.

My tutor has a PHD in Cryptography and finds many holes in current methods as well as a large number of people who don't understand it and yet claim to understand it. It is rather concerning, the reason the US government is always being hacked is because their security is crap. Through my security course I am re-learning the Maths school failed to teach me and you know what. The maths behind it is rather interesting. It is also a good eye opener to how much more there is to still learn, but I have always enjoyed learning new subjects. Life is no fun without challenges.
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Offline TheEPROM9Topic starter

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #7 on: April 22, 2015, 10:14:05 am »
One of my projects with these is to fully reverse engineer them. The thing is 30 years old so might as well open source the design.
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Offline smjcuk

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #8 on: April 22, 2015, 10:20:45 am »
Good plan. Would be interested to see the results.
 

Offline TheEPROM9Topic starter

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #9 on: April 22, 2015, 02:53:25 pm »
Good plan. Would be interested to see the results.

We believe this would be a drop in replacement LCD:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/240x64-24064-240-64-Graphic-Dot-Matrix-LCD-Module-Yellow-Green-LED-Backlight-Free-Shipping/635765367.html

We have also been discussing the revece engineering project here, ROM dumps can be downloaded from here as well.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118910608126229/permalink/827615027255780/

The project is currently on hiatus at the moment but will be picked up when there is time again.
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Offline Alex Eisenhut

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #10 on: April 22, 2015, 11:45:12 pm »
Very nice. The first portable computer I remember seeing as a kid was the GRiD on the show Riptide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_Compass
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Offline TheEPROM9Topic starter

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #11 on: April 23, 2015, 12:11:09 am »
Very nice. The first portable computer I remember seeing as a kid was the GRiD on the show Riptide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_Compass

I would love one of those laptops. Sadly they non-existent in the UK. To be honest I was lucky to get 2 DVW original Husky's as they are an extramaly rare machine.
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Offline smjcuk

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #12 on: April 23, 2015, 08:13:08 am »
Nice.

I always liked the (much later) HP 200LX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_200LX - I had one and it could do scary things like run SPICE (slowly) and had a nice RPN calculator built in.
 

Offline Howardlong

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #13 on: April 23, 2015, 09:05:14 am »
Nice.

I always liked the (much later) HP 200LX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_200LX - I had one and it could do scary things like run SPICE (slowly) and had a nice RPN calculator built in.

I have two 200LXs, one as a parts backup. The main one had an internal RAM upgrade done on it.

I used to write code on it using a version of Borland Turbo C, and you could just run Windows 3.0 on it for what good it was on a mono CGA screen.

The LCD was starting to show blank lines on it last time I used it a few years ago, might have to get it out again and repair it if I can.
 

Offline smjcuk

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #14 on: April 23, 2015, 11:05:45 am »
Nice.

I always liked the (much later) HP 200LX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_200LX - I had one and it could do scary things like run SPICE (slowly) and had a nice RPN calculator built in.

I have two 200LXs, one as a parts backup. The main one had an internal RAM upgrade done on it.

I used to write code on it using a version of Borland Turbo C, and you could just run Windows 3.0 on it for what good it was on a mono CGA screen.

The LCD was starting to show blank lines on it last time I used it a few years ago, might have to get it out again and repair it if I can.

I'd sell it - saw one for for crazy money a few weeks ago on ebay!
 

Offline Howardlong

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #15 on: April 23, 2015, 11:44:36 am »
I just fired up the one I can find, it looks like it's the basic 2MB one that I bought for parts, but it works flawlessly, screen is fine, wrote "Hello World" in Borland C on it. Nice.

The batteries were dead, had to replace the AAs and the CR2032. Luckily on the compact flash there was a directory called "backup" which had, well, the RAM disk's contents, conscientious old boy that I am. Copied it cack to the RAM disk, all is good.

Worst thing about it is that I now realise how bad my eyes are compared to 15 or 20 years ago :-(

I used to scratch my head why people kept asking for a backlight for it, now I understand!

Sorry, did not wish to hijack this thread, but nostalgia is nostalgia.

 

Offline smjcuk

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #16 on: April 23, 2015, 11:56:44 am »
Nice! How long did it take to compile that?

Comparison on my current i7-4930K with 32Gb RAM and SSD RAID :)

 

Offline Howardlong

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #17 on: April 23, 2015, 05:35:51 pm »
Timed by my own fair hand...

Turbo C 2.01 (1988), 5s in the IDE, 7s from the command line

Borland C 2.0 (1991), 15s, or 13s using precompiled headers, both in the IDE, I didn't have the command line version on the CF card.

This was run from compact flash, I am pretty sure it runs faster from RAM drive but there's not enough room on this one, my other one, when I find it, not only had 6MB of RAM but it also had a double-speed upgrade. Woooo!

Back in the day, I used to write my C in the Borland IDEs, compile it up for syntax errors, then build it "properly" in the company standard, Microsoft C 6, because the Borland tools were so much faster. IF you ever used Microsoft's Programmer's Workbench (PWB), you'll know what I mean. It took Microsoft several years to catch up. They introduced QuickC but it was so crippled compared to Borland's offerings. The straw that broke the camel's back in the C wars on Microsoft OS's was Windows, where they'd had to introduce so many kludges to make the environment work that the competitors' compilers and IDEs needed to be redesigned and rebuilt pretty much from scratch. Even then to debug early Windows stuff you had two choices, either Symdeb or Codeview, with a second mono monitor (not possible on the same screen) or with symdeb you could do it over a serial connection. I wrote a special Windows VGA display driver to allow Codeview and Windows to run concurrently on a split screen, that saved a lot of grief, it was pretty unusual to have two monitors in those days. Memories...

 

Offline TheEPROM9Topic starter

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #18 on: April 23, 2015, 06:23:01 pm »
Don't worry about straying off topic  :popcorn:

I do like C. The best dev environment for me is Linux, compiler built right in and all you have to do is start a text editor normally nano or vi and get coding. Windows is more of a users operating system that does let you play around but Linux is pure tetchy fun. Just avoid the hardcore Linux community's as they are full of self deluded dicks and ass hols that should bugger off and grow up. The Arduino is a nice bastardized C platform that I like a lot because you can get project up and running insainly fast which is good if you are not much of a software dev like me. It is nice to see such old hardware being programed in C rather than a crappy version of Microsoft BASIC. Acorn made the bast BASIC =-)
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Offline smjcuk

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #19 on: April 23, 2015, 06:50:03 pm »
Howardlong: thanks for posting the benchmarks - much appreciated. That's a lot better than I thought it was going to be actually. I was brought up on Unix and Acorn machines so I didn't end up using Windows at all until 1998 with NT4. I count this as a blessing that I missed out on segmented long/far stuff in C :)

Don't worry about straying off topic  :popcorn:

I do like C. The best dev environment for me is Linux, compiler built right in and all you have to do is start a text editor normally nano or vi and get coding. Windows is more of a users operating system that does let you play around but Linux is pure tetchy fun. Just avoid the hardcore Linux community's as they are full of self deluded dicks and ass hols that should bugger off and grow up. The Arduino is a nice bastardized C platform that I like a lot because you can get project up and running insainly fast which is good if you are not much of a software dev like me. It is nice to see such old hardware being programed in C rather than a crappy version of Microsoft BASIC. Acorn made the bast BASIC =-)

Is a bit off topic - sorry!

I'm using FreeBSD here and that's LLVM. It's like Linux without the asshatery which I entirely agree with :)

As for BASIC implementations I couldn't agree more. It's great. And still is. I have a Raspberry Pi here running RISC OS that gets used occasionally - still my favourite platform ever!
 

Offline TheEPROM9Topic starter

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #20 on: April 24, 2015, 08:29:07 am »
Howardlong: thanks for posting the benchmarks - much appreciated. That's a lot better than I thought it was going to be actually. I was brought up on Unix and Acorn machines so I didn't end up using Windows at all until 1998 with NT4. I count this as a blessing that I missed out on segmented long/far stuff in C :)

Don't worry about straying off topic  :popcorn:

I do like C. The best dev environment for me is Linux, compiler built right in and all you have to do is start a text editor normally nano or vi and get coding. Windows is more of a users operating system that does let you play around but Linux is pure tetchy fun. Just avoid the hardcore Linux community's as they are full of self deluded dicks and ass hols that should bugger off and grow up. The Arduino is a nice bastardized C platform that I like a lot because you can get project up and running insainly fast which is good if you are not much of a software dev like me. It is nice to see such old hardware being programed in C rather than a crappy version of Microsoft BASIC. Acorn made the bast BASIC =-)

Is a bit off topic - sorry!

I'm using FreeBSD here and that's LLVM. It's like Linux without the asshatery which I entirely agree with :)

As for BASIC implementations I couldn't agree more. It's great. And still is. I have a Raspberry Pi here running RISC OS that gets used occasionally - still my favourite platform ever!

I have a RISO OS SD somewhere. Still need to test it with old Acrameeds games. I use a lot of my Pi's for security hacking machines.
TheEPROM9 (The Husky Hunter Collectors inc.)
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Offline Mr Biggs

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #21 on: June 22, 2015, 08:42:49 pm »
Hi all,

I have a fully functioning Husky Hunter 2 complete with Ellar surveying software (I also have the manual for this) which is of no longer of any use to me so was wondering how much it may be worth.

Thanks,
 

Online helius

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #22 on: June 22, 2015, 09:11:17 pm »
Is a husky hunter like a chubby chaser?  :palm:
 

Offline nfmax

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #23 on: June 24, 2015, 12:40:10 pm »
We used Husky Hunters back in the '80s as control & data processing devices for an airborne system to measure vibration & rotor blade movement on helicopters. It was great being able to unplug the HH from the data acquisition unit & take your results back to the office as soon as the rotor spun down - nothing to download.

I will never forget visiting Sikorsky in Bridgeport in 1986, working with this system. I was in the canteen, queuing with my burger & fries and watching the launch of Challenger on live TV...
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: Husky Hunter Computers (Rare & Obscure Computers)
« Reply #24 on: June 24, 2015, 08:52:51 pm »
The screenshot of the hunter looks about the same as my old Tandy model100 and 200, is it the same MS operating system?
 


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