Ongoing ESS-Related Scans

[segaloco]

I've got a new document scanned this evening, and have decided I'll just have a running thread of ESS-related items as I scan them since I have so many in the pipeline.

Tonight is the Guide To Stored Program Control Switching from the Bell System Plant Operations Training Center

https://archive.org/details/guide-to-stored-program-control-switching

This document is a small comb-bound plastic flipbook consisting of a cover and then three "decks" of flip cards making up the contents.  My scan doesn't do the real intention of the guide justice, in that I simply scanned each set as if they were one page.  However, you are supposed to flip each deck separately to the component desired and if they're all networking components, the three cards represent the holistic network formed.  The traces from one are supposed to lead into the next, so on and so forth.  So if you really wanted to use it right, you'd have to take all of the "pages" of this PDF that have the cards and split them into three, then pick one left card, one middle card, and one right card, whichever represents the network scenario desired, and you get a helpful diagram.  Not all cards are for the three-part diagrams, some just have information about a single component.

There is no date, I marked it 1975 on archive.org due to that being about around the middle years of that branding style.  This covers just #1 and #2 ESS as well as some auxiliary stuff involved in their connections.

One word of apology, I'm not very good at color adjustments, and I certainly do not have a production-grade LCD monitor, so I did my best with the lighting and contrast to balance readability with cleanliness.  The red and orange in the scans are hopefully distinguishable enough, but it took quite a bit of tweaking to even get that level of distinction.  The orange is much more distinct in the physical specimen.  Throughout it is typically used for circles representing subscriber equipment, whereas red is used for pulsing equipment like transmitter circuits, so hopefully the action the component takes coupled with the color makes it more readily apparent which is which.

Anywho, as alluded to, I have several other ESS-related things in the pipeline, including:

- A 1AESS Interrupt Analysis Handbook
- Several Bell Laboratories Record issues from '80-'82, some of which touch on 4/5ESS stuff
- A much more recent binder of Lucent 5ESS-2000 maintenance documents

I'm not working to any particular schedule so stuff will just kinda trickle in as I work on it.

P.S. I am quite, *quite* interested in the March-May 1980 issue(s) of the Bell Laboratories Record, an index of that years issues I read through today indicated there are some 3B20 focus pieces in that range.  If anyone has a lead on scans or physical specimens that can be scanned I would certainly be interested.  Sadly this range is not represented in the set that I've got waiting currently.

[paul-f]

P.S. I am quite, *quite* interested in the March-May 1980 issue(s) of the Bell Laboratories Record, an index of that years issues I read through today indicated there are some 3B20 focus pieces in that range.  If anyone has a lead on scans or physical specimens that can be scanned I would certainly be interested. 

Thanks for your scanning efforts. They would make good additions to the TCI Library. Before scanning, you might check to see if copies of your documents are already in the Library.

Some selected BLR articles are available in the TCI Library, along with a searchable index and index to an on-line source for scans of complete issues from 1925-61.

https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/document-repository/catalogs-manuals/bell-system-we/bell-labs-record

You have probably already found the files on archive.org.

https://archive.org/search?query=bell+laboratories+record

[segaloco]

You have probably already found the files on archive.org.

https://archive.org/search?query=bell+laboratories+record

That's actually where I found the index that tipped me off to the 3B20 content.  Sadly their collection is pretty sparse regarding recent years.  I'm hoping to change that very soon

As for the TCI library, yeah, I saw that they have a wonderful selection of back issues, but when you get into the 70s and 80s that's when stuff online starts to get really patchy.  There's someone on eBay that might be sitting on a whole pile of these, I've been scooping up issues in that timeframe and then I'll see a few new ones pop up a few days later, so they may just be slowly trickling a collection out to auctions.  Either way, I'm keeping my eyes peeled on those as well.

Not scooping up every single issue I see, I want to give others a chance to own cool things, but at the same time, I have to consider that anyone else that buys this stuff may intend for it to go in a shelf or display case somewhere, which is one of my #1 irks with this sort of historical stuff.  It's fine to have a set piece, make sure the valuable information inside of it is preserved first, especially if whatever *thing* it happens to be is incredibly damage-prone (i.e. paper that can burn/disintegrate, magnetic media that can rot, etc.)  For the record anything telephony related that I don't intend to keep on my bookshelf is being added to an eventual donation run down to the Seattle Connections Museum, whenever I make that trip, so hopefully they'll see to the physical specimens being as well preserved as the scans.

[segaloco]

Hoo boy is this one exciting: https://archive.org/details/5ess-switch-dk5e-cd-1999-05

After the link is the April/May 1999 issue of the 5ESS-Switch DK5E-CD distributed to Lucent 5ESS-2000 customers containing numerous technical drawings, maintenance and installation procedures, as well as a few other tidbits including a chunk of the 1999 UNIX-RTR manual.  UNIX-RTR is a descendant of the stream of UNIX otherwise known colloquially as DMERT (although DMERT is technically a hypervisor UNIX/RT runs inside of).  This version of UNIX is one of the key aspects of the 5ESS system that I'm trying to turn up literally anything I can find on as it represents the longest surviving UNIX stream in constant development from the time of the Bell System up through I believe just recently (what with 5ESS stuff starting to drop off at Nokia-Bell Labs.)  One of my pipe-dream goals is to turn up a recent-ish (last 20 years) copy of UNIX-RTR to get an idea on what the Labs continued to do with it after the rest of the UNIX world got overtaken by open systems like BSD and Linux.  The real kicker is as far as I know, UNIX-RTR is still very much a 3B20 operating system, and as of present I'm not aware of any preserved 3B20-specific UNIX code.

Any who, lots of other stuff in there about the physical hardware, installation, etc.  The contents of the zip file are synthesized from the three discs, most content was on disc one but a couple of directories came from the second and third discs.  This all came with a paper binder as well, I have not looked through things yet to see if the full contents of the binder are represented in the documents here, but if not, I intend to do paper scans as well.  Anywho, enjoy!

[segaloco]

A couple new ones tonight, two training programs for the 5ESS-2000:

https://archive.org/details/5ess-2000-switch-es5431-office-data-base-1998
https://archive.org/details/5ess-2000-switch-es5432-system-analysis-1998

Linked above are the Office Data Base Installation and System Analysis training CDs (ES5431 and ES5432) from 1998.  Contained within are several interesting bits, among them, a 5ESS-2000 user interface simulator.  I actually got the simulator to start up in a Windows 98 SE virtual machine:



The bar along the top is launched when first starting the software.  In addition to the Simulation option you see displayed, there are also several relevant documents to whichever training the present CD is for as well as the Training section which I thus far have not gotten to work.  According to the documentation this is dependent on a key diskette to work properly.  I've ripped the key diskettes that came with these two sets and in both cases, dd(1) errored out after 16KB.  This may simply be the whole payload, or there may be more data on the diskettes that I'd have to extract via unconventional means.  The files in the archive are currently a zip of the CDs rather than iso images, a faux pas regarding optical media preservation.  My FreeBSD installation for my one CD-compatible computer is on a hard disk that isn't installed right now, and I have no idea (and don't really intend to learn) how to use dd(1) on Windows NT properly.  Once I get iso rips done I'll upload those as well as I believe those are also necessary to actually get the training section to work.  The options in there barked about the relevant CD not being present even when I had reassembled a new iso through VirtualBox with the contents of the CD.

Anywho, I'm going to be studying this simulator pretty heavily.  Given that the underlying computer of the 5ESS, the 3B20, runs on the DMERT operating system, I'm hopeful this means there's a chance some aspect of DMERT or at least a 3B20 emulation setup of some kind might live down in the guts of this software.

Also, there are some paper materials in the boxes these came in as well, I have not prioritized scanning these as I would imagine much of the documentation is also in the digital documentation provided, similar to the other 5ESS training material I archived.  In any case, I do eventually intend to scan the paper copies, box art, etc. but wanted to get the digital stuff up first.  Enjoy!

[segaloco]

Got some more 5ESS-related media:

https://archive.org/details/5ess-2000-switch-es54v02cd-ezgrow-1999
https://archive.org/details/5ess-switch-es5462-switching-mdule-xc-installation-version-1
https://archive.org/details/5ess-switch-site-package-oam-drawings-release-08-2005
https://archive.org/details/5ess-switch-expanded-package-oam-documentation-release-07-2007

Currently these are bin/cue archives so you must use something like bchunk[1] or a mount daemon supporting bin/cue to get at the contents.  I intend on following these with ISO uploads but just haven't yet.

The first set contains videos concerning the EZGrow procedure to grow a 5ESS system.

The second set contains training on the "Switching Module - XC" 5ESS subsystem.

The third set contains engineering drawings and descriptions of various components of the 5ESS circa 2005.

Finally, the fourth set contains a large array of 5ESS documentation circa 2007.

The latter two sets present the documentation largely in the DynaText SGML format.  A reader is included on disc that seems to work mostly fine for me (Windows 10, x86_64), albeit scrolling must be done by clicking the scrollbar, a standard wheel does not seem to work.  I've found that printing the SGML documents to PDF produces a reasonable copy, an example of which can be found here in the form of the UNIX-RTR manual from the 2007 disc: https://archive.org/details/5ess-switch-unix-rtr-operating-system-reference-manual-issue-10

That's all for now.  I'll continue keeping any eye out for materials.

[1] - http://he.fi/bchunk/