15 Oct
2016
15 Oct
'16
10:07 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Brownlee" <abs at
absd.org>
We had a PN9080 and PN6040 at City University as the
main systems in the
late 90's
Ah, yes, "The Magic Roundabout" - was three 6040s and one
9080. I still
possess the Gould nameplate from the 9000.
They were the last machines we had that we though of as mainframes (even
if many would call them minis - but I think the racks were wider than 19"
so they clearly weren't minis!)
There's some interest in the story of how this system came together:
we did have a Honeywell dual 66/60 which was supplemented by the 9000 as
a time-sharing system when we had had it 5 years.
After two more years we calculated that we could buy and maintain the
trio of 6000s for less than the maintenance cost for the three years
that the Honeywell was due to remain and gain a noiceable increase in
computing power (and a noticeable decrease in power consumption) by
doing so ? and actually managed to convince the bean counters of this.
(accessed via the usual mix of ADM3As, ADM5s, some
Sun3s and a
whole bunch of Whitechapel MG-1s, ans some colour terminals of which I
cannot recall the name, but I remember them having a setting where they
would auto colour characters based on their clas - alpha one colour,
numbers another, and two or three other colours for the rest of ASCII)
I also forget what those colour terminals were. The first Sun came along
when it turned out that it was cheaper to buy it and an Ada* compiler than
the Ada for the Honeywell.
* Computer Science /insisted/ they needed an Ada compiler.
They never used it - but the Sun was useful :-)
When the CS department finally moved away from their
own 6040 it was left
forgotten in a room over the summer - in the autumn the aircon was found to
have failed, overflowed and the machine was sitting there with water all
over the floor and in a steam bath. Still running fine.
Don't remember that - but certainly believable
Quite robust that ECL :)
Um, I don't think
the 6000s were ECL - think they were a reimplementation of
the 9000 using cheaper technology - probably whatever was the current
"state of the art" TTL (don't think CMOS had taken-over for speed yet)
Thanks, Abs, for reminding me of those times.
Andy