12 Apr
2006
12 Apr
'06
4:13 p.m.
I was in Montreal today picking up some goodies*, and the guy showed me
a Buroughs L5000 accounting machine - too big for me, but he would love
it to find a good home.
It's BIG - the size of a good sized desk. The schematics that he had with
it show a date of 1966... Has a keyboard, what appears to be a printer of
some sort, and a paper tape reader. Thats all I know
Located in Laval, outside of Montreal, Quebec Canada. Would be a monster
to ship!
* I know - what goodies?
- Complete TRS-80 Model II, main unit, keyboard, drive-expansion unit with
three drives - the honkin big TRS-80 "line printer", and a TRS-80 daisy.
Tons of software (more than a dozen boxes of disks, many original) and
complete documentation (huge stack of TRS-80 binders).
- ADDS Mentor 2000
Can anyone tell me anything about this? Worth keeping? (It's fairly big).
Got some manuals, but no media.
- Some odds & ends.
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html
12 Apr
12 Apr
3:36 p.m.
Dave wrote....
- ADDS Mentor 2000
Can anyone tell me anything about this? Worth keeping? (It's fairly
big).
Got some manuals, but no media.
The ADDS Mentor was a Pick (see footnote) Operating System/Database machine.
It was not one of the most common ones, but it wasn't rare either. They had
a very nice pick implementation but didn't do the best job marketing it,
perhaps because they also were pushing unix ADDS machines at the same time.
I personally think it's worth saving, but, not many people are pick-heads
like me :) I know those machines (the OS at least) inside and out and could
help you get it running. Pick's RDBMS is unique and interesting (to me!).
Jay
Footnote - Pick Operating System - also known as UniVerse, Unidata,
Revelation, Reality, Sequel, Mentor, Zebra, OpenInsight (mostly), Ultimate,
PR1ME Information, etc. etc.
6:58 p.m.
New subject: Mentor 2000/Pick - was: Buroughs L5000 available
Dave wrote....
Thanks for the info Jay, it seems fairly impressive - It's got 16 DB-9
connectors (serial?) on the back - Is this a serious multi-user machine?
I have some documentation, but not all that much (and no media), can
you suggest any resources - Probably won't get to it for a while (still
working on the Unisys), but eventually I'll be hungry for details!
- ADDS Mentor 2000
Can anyone tell me anything about this? Worth keeping? (It's fairly
big).
Got some manuals, but no media.
The ADDS Mentor was a Pick (see footnote) Operating System/Database machine.
It was not one of the most common ones, but it wasn't rare either. They had
a very nice pick implementation but didn't do the best job marketing it,
perhaps because they also were pushing unix ADDS machines at the same time.
I personally think it's worth saving, but, not many people are pick-heads
like me :) I know those machines (the OS at least) inside and out and could
help you get it running. Pick's RDBMS is unique and interesting (to me!).
Jay Footnote - Pick Operating System - also known as
UniVerse, Unidata,
Revelation, Reality, Sequel, Mentor, Zebra, OpenInsight (mostly), Ultimate,
PR1ME Information, etc. etc.
This is most likely a Pick machine. it probably took
a tape to boot
it. It may be a Z 8000 type
machine, if it is Pick. They were one of the first ones to try to use
the Z8000 in a system.
Jim
Thanks Jim - indeed the only removable storage appears to be a QIC
tape ...
Regards,
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html
6:37 p.m.
New subject: Mentor 2000/Pick - was: Buroughs L5000 available
Dave Dunfield wrote:
>Dave wrote....
>
>
if jay has media around, i imagine it is a qic-60 45mb or 60mb tape to
copy to
get a sysgen. Hopefully he has one. I can ask a buddy that used to work
with adds as well.
pick is now called "rainingdata.com" I'll try to post a link to a manual
if i
can find one.
the remainder of what was pick is now called the Pick Data Provider
for .NET, so it has been soaked up into the borg, never to be seen again.
Jim
6:53 p.m.
New subject: Mentor 2000/Pick - was: Buroughs L5000 available
jim stephens wrote:
Dave Dunfield wrote:
the first link below points to a manual that will be close to the Pick
system basic language you can run on Mentor.
The second one points to a manual that gives a flavor of the dictionary
driven nature of pick.
the last link is the wikipedia entry for pick, which has some
information, and provided these links.
Jim
http://www.jes.com/pb/index.html
http://www.d3ref.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system
13 Apr
13 Apr
7:17 p.m.
New subject: Mentor 2000/Pick - was: Buroughs L5000 available
Jim wrote...
I haven't looked, but that's gotta be Jonathan E. Sisk ? Talk about a blast
from the past :)
Jay
6:35 p.m.
New subject: Mentor 2000/Pick - was: Buroughs L5000 available
jim stephens wrote:
Dave Dunfield wrote:
Actually D3 is still a good native Pick product. Granted, RD is trying
to screw people to death for license fees...
You should check out OpenQM. It's an open source version of a
commercial MV product called QM. You can download it at
http://www.openqm.com. It's a really nice product and very compatible
with many flavors of Pick.
g.
> Dave wrote....
>
if jay has media around, i imagine it is a qic-60 45mb or 60mb tape to
copy to
get a sysgen. Hopefully he has one. I can ask a buddy that used to work
with adds as well.
pick is now called "rainingdata.com" I'll try to post a link to a manual
if i
can find one.
the remainder of what was pick is now called the Pick Data Provider
for .NET, so it has been soaked up into the borg, never to be seen again.
7:14 p.m.
New subject: Mentor 2000/Pick - was: Buroughs L5000 available
Dave wrote....
Thanks for the info Jay, it seems fairly impressive -
It's got 16 DB-9
connectors (serial?) on the back - Is this a serious multi-user machine?
Pick is
designed from the Virtual Assembler on up to be a multi-user RDBMS.
It is a serious multiuser machine. Probably on all DB9's, but particularly I
noticed on most Pick machines.... every vendor had a different pinout for
the DB9 port. GA Zebra's did tx/rx/sgnd on 3/4/5!
I have some documentation, but not all that much (and
no media), can
you suggest any resources - Probably won't get to it for a while (still
working on the Unisys), but eventually I'll be hungry for details!
When you get
ready let me know, I have quite a few manuals. There is also
books on Pick at B.Dalton/Waldenbooks, at least their used to be! The best
part if pick is dynamic arrays. A little odd at first, but once the light
bulb goes off, you'll wonder why everyone didn't do it that way!
> This is most likely a Pick machine. it probably
took a tape to boot
> it. It may be a Z 8000 type
> machine, if it is Pick. They were one of the first ones to try to use
> the Z8000 in a system.
Most pick systems would boot up right from the hard
drives, the tape was
only needed to install a fresh system.
I don't recall if the Adds Mentor 2000 was a firmware implementation or a
software implementation. I found the software implementations to be much
more fascinating/fun.
Jay
8:23 p.m.
New subject: Mentor 2000/Pick - was: Buroughs L5000 available
Jay West wrote:
Dave wrote....
Thanks for the inf<snip>
Most pick systems would boot up right from the hard
drives, the tape
was only needed to install a fresh system.
I assumed his mentor would be wiped, or he'd want to find a sysgen for
it or it would not be very
interesting.
I don't recall if the Adds Mentor 2000 was a
firmware implementation
or a software implementation. I found the software implementations to
be much more fascinating/fun.
Jay
The only firmware machines would be Microdata, Evolution /
intertechnique, Irvine Computer Corp, Ultimate.
Pick's move to Open Architecture pretty much doomed the firmware
approach, due to the changes needed
to adapt to the new requirements of virtual, and the time it took to do
implementations of firmware machines.
Ultimate did co processors for honeywell level 6, Dec, and vax
(different for the VMS). their tandem
machine was bought from the australians (along with a friend, Dave Rose)
and their mainframe implementation
was bought from SMI, chicago, along with my friend Dale Tyler. both
ended up in mainline
pick develpment after that.
Ultimmate also did a ground up port with a different software approach
to the running of pick on top of
unix. rather than have the virtual "frames" of code and executing the
assembly, you ran a big build that
retained the data needed in each objectframe, more or less but
translated the whole lot of the pick
assembly code to C, them made one massive 32mb HP or RS6000 executable
with all executble
code.
It was more stable to translate that way, as the executable was just a
huge application to the unix
system, and required no real access to execute code. It took a couple
of releasees to get it
running fast enough, but it is still being used by at least a couple of
customers today, on HP.
Interesting way to translate an assembly architecture to be hosted on a
Unix box, as all pick
systems ended up.
Universe and Unidata were ground up implementations, and were all C, I
believe. Revelation
was assembly or c, i think, and is still around as well. Revelation 6
is the dos lover's
dream pick system. two 1.4mb floppies, and you are runnning pick on
dos 6.2 . of course
it is now advanced revelation, but I still lliked the original Roger
Harpel version.
Jim
12 Apr
12 Apr
3:40 p.m.
Dave Dunfield wrote:
I was in Montreal tod
- ADDS Mentor 2000
Can anyone tell me anything about this?
This is most likely a Pick machine. it probably took a tape to boot
it. It may be a Z 8000 type
machine, if it is Pick. They were one of the first ones to try to use
the Z8000 in a system.
Jim
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days inactive
6829
days old
10 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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dave06a＠dunfield.com -
geneb＠simpits.com -
jwest＠classiccmp.org -
jwstephens＠msm.umr.edu