2 Jun
2001
2 Jun
'01
2:53 p.m.
Unisys "Micro A"
Anybody know about such a system?
I took in a stray cat system a few months ago, started
parting it out, saw something interesting, then put it all
back together again. Today I booted it up (fits on 15A,
hurrah!) and determined the following:
Base system:
Intel mobo w/8MB
Adaptec SCSI
OS/2 on SCSI disk
internal SCSI tape (QIC)
external SCSI tape (DAT)
VGA card
Add-Ons:
Unisys "Micro A" CPU card (perhaps DC113)
daughter memory card
two multiplexed serial cards
Another Adaptec SCSI card,
apparently for the Uni half of the system.
Another Internal SCSI drive
two external drives
Surprized it actually does stuff.
The "Micro A" system is controlled by three OS/2 Apps:
Admin, ODT 1,
and SCS (System Control Subsystem) (nice name) (huh?).
ODT 1 is a cryptic CLI system,
SCS is a boot console for the HW
Anybody got any beans to spill on this?
is it just a big printer controller?
I noticed the Micro A is apparently microcontrolled.
What was it sold for?
John A.
2 Jun
2 Jun
5 p.m.
John,
My guess would be a PC sized version of a Unisys A series Mainframe. I
don't know anything about them..... just that they exist. You might
inquire in the Unisys newsgroup.
Chad Fernandez
Michigan, USA
John Allain wrote:
Unisys "Micro A"
Anybody know about such a system?
I took in a stray cat system a few months ago, started
parting it out, saw something interesting, then put it all
back together again. Today I booted it up (fits on 15A,
hurrah!) and determined the following:
Base system:
Intel mobo w/8MB
Adaptec SCSI
OS/2 on SCSI disk
internal SCSI tape (QIC)
external SCSI tape (DAT)
VGA card
Add-Ons:
Unisys "Micro A" CPU card (perhaps DC113)
daughter memory card
two multiplexed serial cards
Another Adaptec SCSI card,
apparently for the Uni half of the system.
Another Internal SCSI drive
two external drives
Surprized it actually does stuff.
The "Micro A" system is controlled by three OS/2 Apps:
Admin, ODT 1,
and SCS (System Control Subsystem) (nice name) (huh?).
ODT 1 is a cryptic CLI system,
SCS is a boot console for the HW
Anybody got any beans to spill on this?
is it just a big printer controller?
I noticed the Micro A is apparently microcontrolled.
What was it sold for?
John A.
3 Jun
3 Jun
8:15 a.m.
That would be my guess as well. IBM put out a S/390 processor-on-a-PCI
once (I have two myself).
Peace... Sridhar
On Sun, 3 Jun 2001, Chad Fernandez wrote:
John,
My guess would be a PC sized version of a Unisys A series Mainframe. I
don't know anything about them..... just that they exist. You might
inquire in the Unisys newsgroup.
Chad Fernandez
Michigan, USA
John Allain wrote:
Unisys "Micro A"
Anybody know about such a system?
I took in a stray cat system a few months ago, started
parting it out, saw something interesting, then put it all
back together again. Today I booted it up (fits on 15A,
hurrah!) and determined the following:
Base system:
Intel mobo w/8MB
Adaptec SCSI
OS/2 on SCSI disk
internal SCSI tape (QIC)
external SCSI tape (DAT)
VGA card
Add-Ons:
Unisys "Micro A" CPU card (perhaps DC113)
daughter memory card
two multiplexed serial cards
Another Adaptec SCSI card,
apparently for the Uni half of the system.
Another Internal SCSI drive
two external drives
Surprized it actually does stuff.
The "Micro A" system is controlled by three OS/2 Apps:
Admin, ODT 1,
and SCS (System Control Subsystem) (nice name) (huh?).
ODT 1 is a cryptic CLI system,
SCS is a boot console for the HW
Anybody got any beans to spill on this?
is it just a big printer controller?
I noticed the Micro A is apparently microcontrolled.
What was it sold for?
John A.
1:52 p.m.
Thanks for the tip.
I went to comp.sys.unisys and I'm starting to get answers and
that's what they're saying (MCP).
I'd like to see this come up myself. WT(f) is MCP?
Looks like i need a clue too on the two SCSI controllers.
If I use the unused one (vis a vis internal cables), It won't boot
OS/2 (probable primary drive conflict). If I camp it on the
busy controller it is seen by Unisys but not by OS/2.
John A.
----- Original Message -----
From: Chad Fernandez <fernande(a)internet1.net>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 1:00 AM
Subject: Re: Unisys "Micro A"
John,
My guess would be a PC sized version of a Unisys A series Mainframe. I
don't know anything about them..... just that they exist. You might
inquire in the Unisys newsgroup.
Chad Fernandez
Add-Ons:
Unisys "Micro A" CPU card (perhaps DC113)
daughter memory card
two multiplexed serial cards
Another Adaptec SCSI card,
apparently for the Uni half of the system.
Another Internal SCSI drive
two external drives
2:50 p.m.
Are you sure that card is an Adaptec? The IBM ServeRAID II Adapters use
Adaptec AIC-7880 chips driven by PowerPC chips. These cards are popular
for RAID in PC-based servers.
Peace... Sridhar
On Sun, 3 Jun 2001, John Allain wrote:
Thanks for the tip.
I went to comp.sys.unisys and I'm starting to get answers and
that's what they're saying (MCP).
I'd like to see this come up myself. WT(f) is MCP?
Looks like i need a clue too on the two SCSI controllers.
If I use the unused one (vis a vis internal cables), It won't boot
OS/2 (probable primary drive conflict). If I camp it on the
busy controller it is seen by Unisys but not by OS/2.
John A.
----- Original Message -----
From: Chad Fernandez <fernande(a)internet1.net>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 1:00 AM
Subject: Re: Unisys "Micro A"
John,
My guess would be a PC sized version of a Unisys A series Mainframe. I
don't know anything about them..... just that they exist. You might
inquire in the Unisys newsgroup.
Chad Fernandez
Add-Ons:
Unisys "Micro A" CPU card (perhaps DC113)
daughter memory card
two multiplexed serial cards
Another Adaptec SCSI card,
apparently for the Uni half of the system.
Another Internal SCSI drive
two external drives
6:42 a.m.
Re:
I'd like to see this come up myself. WT(f) is MCP?
MCP = Master Control Program
It started life on the Burroughs B 5000, and has grown and
changed over the years.
On the B 6500, in 1970 (when I first saw it), it supported
multi processors, multi-programming, hierarchical file systems,
virtual memory. It was written in ALGOL (well, ESPOL, which
was Burroughs ALGOL with a couple more extensions).
Also, circa 1970, on the B 7500, it supported fault tolerance,
years before Tandem "invented" it. I remember a demo at
U.S. Customs agency in San Diego, where someone yanked a processor
board out while the system was up ... the system kept running.
(I can't recall if the process that was executing died, but
I do remember that everything else stayed up & running).
The neatest thing about some models of the 7700 was that if you
had a dual CPU and at least two memory modules and at least
two disk drives, you could "split" a running system into two
completely separate systems, without losing a single process on
the "original" system. (The processes and OS would be running
on one of the CPUs, and the other CPU would boot up into an
idle state.) We used this at night, in 1978, to split off the
second CPU so we could have a crash & burn development system
for awhile. When we were done, we re-joined the systems (again,
preserving all the running processes on the "original" system).
The B5000 (circa) 1963 ran something called MCP, but I don't
know the relationship between it and the B 5500. The B 5500 was
a next generation machine, and ran MCP (written in ALGOL). The
B 5500 was followed by the B 5700 (don't know the differences between
the 5500 and the 5700).
A great paper on the Burroughs line is at:
http://members.nbci.com/amayer/papers/B5000.html
(hope the cut/paste didn't cause my mailer to go nuts again)
Stan Sieler sieler(a)allegro.com
www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html www.allegro.com/sieler
8603
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7 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
allain＠panix.com -
dittman＠dittman.net -
fernande＠internet1.net -
jss＠ou.edu -
sieler＠allegro.com -
vance＠ikickass.org