This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the Honeywell DDP-516 computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

Early 70'', i was working at Eindoven for Philips on a medical project called Medex for Breda hospital using a DDP 516 (my first job).
I was adding a disk file management system named ISOS (indexed sequential overflow splitting) to Olert 2 operating system.

"The best toy I ever found in GDR"
DDP516 cloned for KRS4200

In the early 70ts or late 60ts somebody has carried some boxes with electronics over the iron boarderline ...
In the eastern germany, GDR, in german: DDR, the guys of ROBOTRON reengenierd this arpa-net-"router" and build a funny nice toy driven by the operators mostly by a typewriter.
( papertape, drums, magnetic-tape also)

the best thing was the bootloading process, operated through the binary "console". Not so nice styled like the original, but with stable working buttons, - so if not in cold mornings the buttons were jumping around. But in seconds they were touched back ...

Very much fun, when the operating girls searching for the buttons around the mt-device and under the drum-section ...

But back to the facts:
KRS4200 has also rewritten opcodes: all the abbreviations stand for german words. So also was developd a "german speaking" BASIC.

In the middle of the 80 were so many "KRS" devices in the GDR, that a special hardware-emulator device emulating KRS was developed for the GDR - PDP11-derivat A6400 (This was the follower-device past KRS in the planing-economy of the GDR.). The result: my moonlanding game (commandline driven) was 10 times faster then on original KRS.

Today are only 2 or 3 devices in some museums. One you can find in "technische Sammlungen Dresden".

The guys of Halle-Computer-museum have some nice old pic of the device:
here some with a best looking DDR-folklore-sheet under the console:
http://www.robotrontechnik.de/bilder/Grossrechner/R4200/R4200_8_k.jpg

here is the website with some stuff around KRS4200:
http://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/r4200.htm

Pjhilips bought the Honeywell DDP 416 and 516 and later DDP 316 as successors to the PR8000$ a 24 bit serial processor, used for industrial control purposes. The PR 8000 was developed in France Fontenay o Roses at Philips Research France and had an industial interface called UESI (Unité de Entree et Sortie Industrielle). This interface was adopted to work with the PR9200 series for industrial control purposes.
Besides industrial control, the P9200 series were used to process data from the Philips non-destructive X-ray material analysis equipment.

I have spoken of this machine many times over the years. I was in the RAF in 1976 at a Telemetry and Command Station.

I taught Series 16 at the Honeywell School in Hammersmith between 1970 and 1974 and then at the School in Cologne. The DDP-516 was a great machine.
I''ve written an Emulator the the H-112 (the 12 bit machine) and may extend it to series 16 one day.

The DDp-516 was sold as P9200 by Philips. The DDP-416 was renamed
P9201. I worked as technician for Philips, was it 1969? One of my tasks
was to stick an aluminium panel with "Philips P9200" on it over the
Honeywell label.

Does anyone know if the Honeywell DDP-516 was sold by Philips as a "P9200" for time-sharing? Or if it could (rather) be used as an teleprocessing interface for Philips mainframes ?
(See for example http://alexandria.tue.nl/extra1/afstversl/E/379042.pdf, p. 5 $it''s in Dutch but not too difficult to read$)
Many thanks to whoever may shed light on this question
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn

I started with Honeywell in England in 1969 with a 3 month programming course and then remained with the UK company for 3 years before joining Honeywell Bull in Switzerland where I stayed for 3 years too. The 16 bit machines were a delight with much of the donkey work being done in software because hardware was so expensive back then. The typical machine had 4k memory with an ASR. The operating systems were small and fast for their time, the drivers simple but effective. I would live to see an instruction set pamphlet again.

Nostalgia! I worked on the 516 from about 76 til 80 - happy memories of the octal keyin loader$
77000, run, start - paper tape boot with the HISI hard drive. The teletype sounded like a dozen typists.