AN/UYKs

William Donzelli wrote: They're not actually DG clones. While they have instruction sets that are either largely compatible with or a superset of those found in some DG machines, the CPU architecture and implementation is uniquely ROLM (which was acquired by Loral from IBM as part of a Justice Department consent decree when IBM purchased ROLM for its Santa Clara telecom division). The AN/UYK-19 designation describes most members of the ROLM 16xx family -- it's applied to the 1602, 1664, 1650, 1602A and 1666. All of these machines have ISAs based on the Nova 800, but later versions include ROLM-specific extensions for hardware stacks and other things, all implemented in an incompatible fashion to DG's efforts. The AN/UYK-64(V) designation has been applied to the 1666B, although at one time it was also applied to a machine manufactured by Raytheon. ROLM manufacture Mil-Spec, not ruggedized, computers and peripherals, and manufactured a single model for all services. This "single model" approach created all sorts of packaging headaches, because the requirements of the Army, Navy and Air Force have almost no overlap. The Air Force, for example, wants machines that can operate from -500 to +60,000ft, unpressurized, and can go from overnight sub-zero cold soak to operational in less than 15 minutes; the Navy wants machines which can survive salt spray and depth charges while the Army worries about things like resistance to fugal growth. One of the more interesting consequences of some of these is the packaging of the machines in sealed ATR chassis. The enclosures are gasketed and filled with dry nitrogen; to eliminate heat each chip is mounted on a thermal frame which carries heat to the sides of the enclosure where (in some models) it is removed by external air/air heat exchangers. ROLM also manufactured peripherals, including disk drives. It was interesting watching the hammer test (which simulates a depth charge); a running drive was mounted to a fixed base and exercised while a large hammer on the end of a chain was raised parallel to the ceiling and then released to strike the drive -- which promptly tore off the mounts and skittered across the room, contained only by its cables -- all without throwing a single error on the exerciser. -- Chris Kennedy chris(a)mainecoon.com http://www.mainecoon.com PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97 -----Original Message----- From: owner-classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:owner-classiccmp@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of William Donzelli Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2001 11:53 AM To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org Subject: AN/UYKs aw288(a)osfn.org