18 Jan
2017
18 Jan
'17
1:36 a.m.
On Tue, 17 Jan 2017, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I find it curious that what seems to be collected in
the minicomputer
area seems to be gear of major brands.
Me too :-)
Does anyone collect Varian minis?
Yes! We have a couple of Varian 620/f (some with expansion boxes)
Or General Automation?
Yes!! We have an SPC-16/65 that I really would like to restore, but I lack
a) all kind of documents/schematics/software and b) the memory board. I
could probably build a replacement for the memory board if I had the
technical documentation for the machine.
We also have the FPs and boards of two GA16-2?? (I know that someone has
the CPU boxes and racks where these came from but I don't recall who it
was).
Or any one of the many non-DEC, HP, etc. minis? Heck,
I don't read much
about DG minis on this list--and they were a major force.
Dietz MINCAL 523; a micro-programmed 19 bit minicomputer with foil
micro-/macroprogram ROM (micro and macro programs share the same
address and data bus) and a mixture of sign/magnitude and twos-complement
arithmetic. It was *great* fun to reverse enginere just *everything* from
the confuse backplane wiring (no bus) to recreating the mnemonics and
disassembling the monitor and microcode.
Christian