-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org>
In a prior life I owned a company that was a Pick
dealer (Pick Systems,
Microdata, GA, Ultimate, etc.), so all kinds of interesting Pick-related
stuff still floats around the house and I rediscover things from time to
time. Today one has surfaced that I thought was lost forever. My father sold
his business recently and in cleaning out things he found a QIC cartridge
tape I had left there for safekeeping as an off-site backup many years ago.
It's a GA (General Automation) Zebra Pick OS Dealer Sysgen tape. This is a
tape that was only provided to GA dealers (for dealers to replace an
end-users lost or damaged boot tapes, or to sell with new systems {the
licensing was in the terminal ports, not the OS}). It was an Account-Save
format tape of an account called DEALER-SYSGEN. On that account was stored
the monitor and ABS sections for every different system GA made. A menu ran
when you logged on to the account and it asked you what system you wanted to
make an OS load tape for (1700, 1750, 2820, 3820, 3000, 3500, 5500, 7820,
8830, etc.), and what tape media you want the tape created on (QIC or 1/2
mag tape). It then wrote a complete bootable tape with bootstrap, monitor,
abs, and files sections for any of those systems. What a find!!! Of course,
I haven't tried to read this tape, perhaps it's got some worthless datafile
backup from something else on it. But it still has the original GA Zebra
lable stating it's the dealer sysgen tape and the write protect is on.... so
I'm hopeful.
I happen to have a GA1750 and a GA2820 in my collection, so I'm thrilled to
know that I can make new boot tapes for them now. More importantly, I can
make boot tapes for any other GA Zebra system. Note that this tape is for
rev 3.8, which was the last non-R91 Pick GA produced (I wasn't a fan of R91,
so I'm really glad it's the pinnacle of the 3.8 train). I need to see if I
can find my manual patch sheets that bring it up to 3.8T1.
Anyways, if anyone has GA Zebra's in their collection and needs a new boot
tape I can help you out. Now I just need to find the DEALER.ASSY account for
3.8 :)
Jay West
Hi Jay
My Zebra says 2510 on the botton sticker if I remember correctly
has a 8" drive and a Qic Tape. Still Boots pick OS. I have
the same tape you have but did not know how to to use it.
My machine model did not show up on the label of the tape either.
Jerry
Jerry Wright
JLC inc.
g-wright at
att.net