15 Nov
2004
15 Nov
'04
10:14 p.m.
On Mon, 2004-11-15 at 22:14 -0800, nospam212-cctalk(a)yahoo.com wrote:
Mine has the Sperry label as it was made before Sperry
became Unisys.
Later ones had the Unisys label. I have a 5000/50 I picked up from a
company I worked for at the time that went out of business. It was an
NCR Tower that Sperry/Unisys put their label on. We had a later model
5000/55 but a friend grabbed that one, little laster processor and
other upgrades. They had a 5000/60 which was by a different company
that I would have loved to have picked up but it required 220 power
which I couldn't provide at the time and was too big for me to house
back then as well. Today yes, 13 years ago no. A shame as it was a
dual processor model.
I'm just digging through ten year old emails here - apparently the
Unisys line went something like:
- 5000/20 and 5000/40 - early 16-bit 68010 @8 or 16 MHz, MFM/RLL
controller.
- 5000/30 and 5000/50 - 32-bit 68020 @16 MHz, MFM/RLL controller.
The /30 has room for two memory cards, the /50 for up to four. The /50
also has room for one more internal disk (full heigth) and more Multibus
bays.
- 5000/35 and 5000/55 - 32-bit 68020 @25MHz, SCSI controller. Otherwise,
the same as /30 and /50.
- 5000/60, /65, /80... - Multi-processor (master-slave, not SMP). Never
seen one of these.
I don't know if there was an NCR equivalent to the multi processor ones;
not heard of one.
I'm sure my Tower has an '030 and not an '020 as the main CPU. I'm also
pretty sure it only has two memory slots (like a 5000/3x) but definitely
has two drives fitted internally (more like a 5000/5x). Maybe I'll see
if I can bring it indoors later and then try and get it going again
after it's had a few days to acclimatise...
Still have manuals and install media for the 5000/50.
Ooh. Wonder if that'd work with my Tower? I know the binaries were
generally interchangeable between NCR and Unisys models, but if I'm
remembering the '030 right, then my system's something other than a
5000/50 equivalent.
Was thinking about putting it on my network at home
again.
Well at some point I want to have my one running at the museum; I don't
have the space to seriously use it here (plus they suck up a lot of
power)
Mine was a development platform for the XVT toolkit, so it's loaded up
with X Windows software; I remember hooking it up to a LAN and running X
sessions on remote X terminals from it ten years ago. Apart from the
power useage it was a nice little server back then :)
Anyway, nice to see my 5000/50 is now worth $5-6. :)
Funny how some of these multi user Unix systems don't fetch much. I'm
surprised they don't go for more money just for the coolness factor (I
mean it's a proper machine rather than just running Linux on an old
PC :-)
cheers
Jules
--
The most secure computer in the world is one not connected to the
internet. That's why I recommend NTL.