7 Jun
2006
7 Jun
'06
8:37 a.m.
Dennis Boone wrote:
Ian Primus <ian_primus at yahoo.com>, who has been a member of this list in
the past, works for one of the few support shops that still supports
Prime and PRIMOS *today*.
He collects classic hardware and runs one or two fully functional Primes
in his house. You might want to email him.
Peace... Sridhar
I was
rewatching "30 Years in the Tardis" last night and came across
an item on the tape I had forgotten about. It's been years since I
watched it, and the last time was long before I started tinkering
with classic computer emulators. Anyway, while rewatching it I
was thrilled to come across a commercial with the Doctor and Romana
advertising a Prime computer. I found some info on the net on the
Prime computer line, such as:
http://www.malch.com/prime/
on the net but no mention of an emulator. I also found some manuals
on BitSavers.org. Having been a Doctor Who fan for years, and with
Tom Baker being my favorite Doctor, I'd love to have the opportunity
to experience a computer system he endorsed.
Aha, another interested person.
There's an unreleased emulator which is complete enough to run PRIMOS
Rev. 21 and most of the utilities; last I knew it had not yet developed
I-mode instruction support. Documentation is slowly accreting on
bitsavers; I have a few things I need to finish up and make available.
PRIMOS tapes seem to be a bit scarce. I have some tapes of utilities
and such that I collected over the years I worked on Prime systems.
I've talked to a few list.folk who have machines in their garages
awaiting enough parts and software to try to revive them. Mine is
a 2550. I've talked to a fellow who has a mostly running 2450.
A machine in the UK recently sold on eBay, and one vendor has a pile
of (overpriced, mislabeled) boards and parts constituting most of a
machine except for cabinet, backplane and disk drives in his store.
I'd be interested in seeing that commercial if you can put it online
somewhere.