Hi again everyone,
Well, the question about the Unisys A series to my friend got him
started. He's fired up his system and started looking for support
stuff. Here are his latest ramblings. And BTW, he has changed his mind
about booting from a floppy. It should work. He spells it out some
more below.
Of interest is the fact that he would start a group, probably yahoo
group specifically for this stuff if there is not a group already. He
is wondering how much interest there really is in this hardware/software?
Additional Information:
well, after the email i finally dug out and powered up the a7-811 i
have. also dug around for other stuff.
here are some observations and corrections.
the system should boot from a dos 6.2 series floppy, however, if you
have the 311 series (based on a U600-35 or U6000-400) it may be a 5.25"
fd to boot from
the scu utilities i have include the following models....
A7-311,411,811 MicroA, U6000-35,U6000-400 and the UNISYS CCP a special
auxiliary processor used on the larger A series unit to connect via some
strange protocols but loosely based on the rack-mount 411
I have a fully functional A7-811 running MCP 4.6 i think... with many
keys for much of the software.
I have a set of boards for a 411 and the chassis, however, i would have
to put them all back together to recheck functionality.,
somewhere i may even have lot's of the doc's in pdf for it if i can find
the cd's.
If there is enough interest, i might startup a resurrection group. have
joe let me know.
i have not done much of this stuff since about 98 and have been out of
the field for about 5 years, so it may take a while for the brain cells
to fire again.
i used to be a systems, applications, and product support person within
a company that developed software for the a-series line. the company is
still around and still does this stuff!!!
as i said to joe earlier, i seem to be remembering more of the gotcha's
than the actual stuff and don't know how much i have forgotten.
i seem to remember that you could have up to 3 scsi controllers in an
811, the first one was a 274x and the rest were 174x and would allow up
to 3 external scsi busses and would support differential as well as
single ended.
The long ethernet card was actually called a NP card or network
processor... it would support the 10b2 or aui communications based on
the position of the wide switch to the back of the card. this card only
works in the mainframe side and you could have up to 2 of them.
if you wanted network connectivity on the OS/2 side, you needed to add a
3C503 card to the PC side.
the SCAMP board and the parasitic daughter board had to be in a specific
slot.
other than that i'll see what i can dig up.
>>LOU<<<
Dave Dunfield wrote:
Hi Joe,
Please thank him for the wealth of info - if you could pass on my questions
below, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to see this thing running, and I think
it's "almost
there", but it would appear that I still need some things...
If he is willing, I would very much appreicate corresponding with him
directly - please forward my email address to him and ask him to contact
me.
As far as I can tell, there is no card like this, and it does not appear to
be missing - I am wondering if this system is "a bit different". Here is
a more details description of what I have:
- There is a "map" printed on the side cover which shows the locations
of various items on the mainboard. It makes no mention of a SCSI
card. There is SCSI connectors, termination and other evidence of
a strong SCSI presence on the mainboard itself.
- The mainboard has 8 EISA slots.
The network card is plugged into the bottom slot (#1 on map).
The suspected A-Series card (with the "do not press" chip) is
plugged into the third slot from the top (#6 on map).
- The above are the only EISA cards - there are no missing end
plates or other evidence that a card has been removed.
- There is a daughter card attached to the suspected A-Series
card which contains memory SIMs.
- Above the EISA slots, toward the front of the machine, is the
486 CPU daughter card (Marked CPU module on the map).
Behind that (toward rear of machine) is a connecter marked
"CPU 64-bit connector" which is unconnected.
- Just above these two items (64-bit connector and 486) are
two slots marked "Memory module" which are both filled with
what is obviously memory cards.
I received no disks, documentation or other material with the machine.
I have obtained a ZIP archive of a number of config programs related to
this machine - Is there any way to identify the correct one of a particular
configuration/type of machine.
I can send a directory listing of the files that I have if that would help.
It "appears to try" to boot from floppy - if sucks on the disk for a few
seconds before it "dies" (no further activity - need power-cycle to
get back to activity).
Will it boot a "normal" CD? Ie: If I make a bootable CD with DOS
on it (done by a floppy disk image) - should this boot?
Thanks for all the info - I haven't gotten it to go far enough to
worry too much about "what happens after booting" yet, but this
is good to know - hopefully I will need this info shortly!
Regards,
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools:
www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html