11 Jul
2005
11 Jul
'05
6:24 a.m.
On Mon, 2005-07-11 at 01:08 -0500, Jim Brain wrote:
This weekend, while picking up a large donation of
Commodore equipment
(~2000 pounds, the truck springs bottomed out :-), I also secured a
3B2/310. Alas, I'm not at all up on this type of machine. Google
brought up some information, but I'd appreciate any personal anecdotes
or information.
I picked up a 3B2/400 a while ago for the museum - one of the same
family as the 310 (IIRC they're the same machine, but the 400 has more
expansion slots and drive bays).
In case you haven't discovered this, AT&T sold the same line of machines
(I'm not sure who actually invented it) - a Google for "ATT 3B2" turns
up a lot more hits than the Olivetti route, including a FAQ. I imagine
that if you're in the US then your machine's badged as an AT&T anyway :)
I get the impression the whole line was pretty popular back in the day,
at least on this side of the pond - why the machines aren't more common
I don't know (just as DEC are so much more common in the bigger machine
class, Sun hardware seems to have drowned out the likes of machines such
as the 3B2)
We don't have any installation media for our 3B2, or manuals - it did
come with a SCSI board and a nice external SCSI QIC tape drive though.
cheers
Jules