17 Jan
2017
17 Jan
'17
12:02 p.m.
On Jan 17, 2017, at 2:50 PM, geneb <geneb at
deltasoft.com> wrote:
On Tue, 17 Jan 2017, Jon Elson wrote:
Nice.
I saw (but never used) a Varian 16 bit mini in college. Forgot the model number; I used
to have the handbook but it seems to have been lost. It was used because of its
microprogramming capabilities. The control panel was unusual: lights and switches
basically, but the switches were membrane push-buttons. So the entire front panel was a
smooth surface.
paul
On 01/17/2017 11:09 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I used to work on a 727 flight simulator that used a Varian 620 to generate the visuals.
The display was capable of addressing 1024 points of light and that's how the runways
and airport outline were drawn. Pretty neat stuff. Here's some pics of the system
that ran the sim:
http://flightweb.simpits.org/BehindTheScenes/727sim_page1.html I find it curious that what seems to be collected
in the minicomputer
area seems to be gear of major brands.
Does anyone collect Varian minis?
I had a Varian 620F a long time ago. It was a
whole bunch of wire-wrap boards. It sort of tried to work, but was very flaky. I was
able to store some words into the core memory, but it seemed like every couple minutes it
would zero out a word or two (I guess it was failing to write back the contents after the
destructive readout.) Without schematics, it was impossible to do much about it.