11 Jul
1999
11 Jul
'99
4:56 p.m.
This is another oddity that I spotted Friday. It's a black box about 3
feet high by 1 x 2 feet with 2 chrome legs that stick out to one side with
castors on the end of them. It has an 8" floppy drive near the top and a FH
5 1/4" hard drive inside. There were several WIDE ( 60 pin?) ribbon cables
hanging out of it. Inside at the bottom it has a card rack with about 6 or
8 Multi-bus cards in it. The label on the outside says that it was made by
Daisy. Any one have any idea what it is?
Joe
11 Jul
11 Jul
3:53 p.m.
On Wed, 31 Dec 1969, Joe wrote:
This is another oddity that I spotted Friday. It's
a black box about 3
feet high by 1 x 2 feet with 2 chrome legs that stick out to one side with
castors on the end of them. It has an 8" floppy drive near the top and a FH
5 1/4" hard drive inside. There were several WIDE ( 60 pin?) ribbon cables
hanging out of it. Inside at the bottom it has a card rack with about 6 or
8 Multi-bus cards in it. The label on the outside says that it was made by
Daisy. Any one have any idea what it is?
Whoa...that's quite a find. I had a chance to play with one of those about
ten years ago, very briefly. It's a very nice CAD system. I'm almost positive
it's Sun-based, so if it's got multibus cards in it, there's a Sun-2 in
there.
That was a kickin' system when I saw it. I was amazed by its capabilities
and speed. My CAD work at the time was done using AutoCAD on a 10MHz 8088
(v20, actually) machine, and the Daisy system totally blew it away. I know,
that's not saying much, but it was impressive at the time. :-)
-Dave McGuire
7:35 p.m.
Daisy is the company that bought Cadnetix and eventually went out of
business. Did you pick it up? I'm not sure how close they are related, but
I have a lot of documentation for the Cadnetix system I have (but haven't
been able to get running). Mine is the same; 68020-based system running a
variant of SunOS under the CAD software.
As far as the cables, could they be 50-pin scsi cables? Mine has an
Adaptec scsi card and two enormous HD's in it (I think 10 meg apiece).
Aaron
On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, Dave McGuire wrote:
On Wed, 31 Dec 1969, Joe wrote:
This is another oddity that I spotted Friday.
It's a black box about 3
feet high by 1 x 2 feet with 2 chrome legs that stick out to one side with
castors on the end of them. It has an 8" floppy drive near the top and a FH
5 1/4" hard drive inside. There were several WIDE ( 60 pin?) ribbon cables
hanging out of it. Inside at the bottom it has a card rack with about 6 or
8 Multi-bus cards in it. The label on the outside says that it was made by
Daisy. Any one have any idea what it is?
Whoa...that's quite a find. I had a chance to play with one of those about
ten years ago, very briefly. It's a very nice CAD system. I'm almost positive
it's Sun-based, so if it's got multibus cards in it, there's a Sun-2 in
there.
That was a kickin' system when I saw it. I was amazed by its capabilities
and speed. My CAD work at the time was done using AutoCAD on a 10MHz 8088
(v20, actually) machine, and the Daisy system totally blew it away. I know,
that's not saying much, but it was impressive at the time. :-)
-Dave McGuire
12 Jul
12 Jul
11:43 a.m.
At 04:53 PM 7/11/99 -0400, Dave wrote:
On Wed, 31 Dec 1969, Joe wrote:
positive
This is another oddity that I spotted Friday.
It's a black box about 3
feet high by 1 x 2 feet with 2 chrome legs that stick out to one side with
castors on the end of them. It has an 8" floppy drive near the top and a FH
5 1/4" hard drive inside. There were several WIDE ( 60 pin?) ribbon cables
hanging out of it. Inside at the bottom it has a card rack with about 6 or
8 Multi-bus cards in it. The label on the outside says that it was made by
Daisy. Any one have any idea what it is?
Whoa...that's quite a find. I had a chance to play with one of those about
ten years ago, very briefly. It's a very nice CAD system. I'm almost
it's Sun-based, so if it's got multibus cards
in it, there's a Sun-2 in
there.
That was a kickin' system when I saw it. I was amazed by its capabilities
and speed. My CAD work at the time was done using AutoCAD on a 10MHz 8088
(v20, actually) machine, and the Daisy system totally blew it away. I know,
that's not saying much, but it was impressive at the time. :-)
Dave,
Hmmm, now it sounds interesting. I didn't see any sign of a keyboard or
monitor for it. What does it use? Any idea what those big cables hanging
out of it are for? Do you want it? I can get it cheap. Hoepfully the
software is still on the hard drive. I don't have any use for it except
for parts and I'd rather not break it up if someone can use it.
Joe
11:53 a.m.
At 04:53 PM 7/11/99 -0400, Dave wrote:
Hmmm, now it sounds interesting. I didn't see any sign of a keyboard or
monitor for it. What does it use? Any idea what those big cables hanging
out of it are for? Do you want it? I can get it cheap. Hoepfully the
software is still on the hard drive. I don't have any use for it except
for parts and I'd rather not break it up if someone can use it.
If it has a sun-2 multibus compatable ram card bigger than 1 Meg, I could
use that. I'm still interested in getting my Sun 1/100u running
an old version of SunOS, but the machine only has 2 slots for ram
cards, and all I have are 1 Meg cards.
-Lawrence LeMay
On Wed, 31 Dec 1969, Joe wrote:
positive
This is another oddity that I spotted Friday.
It's a black box about 3
feet high by 1 x 2 feet with 2 chrome legs that stick out to one side with
castors on the end of them. It has an 8" floppy drive near the top and a FH
5 1/4" hard drive inside. There were several WIDE ( 60 pin?) ribbon cables
hanging out of it. Inside at the bottom it has a card rack with about 6 or
8 Multi-bus cards in it. The label on the outside says that it was made by
Daisy. Any one have any idea what it is?
Whoa...that's quite a find. I had a chance to play with one of those about
ten years ago, very briefly. It's a very nice CAD system. I'm almost it's Sun-based, so if it's got multibus
cards in it, there's a Sun-2 in
there.
11:25 a.m.
On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Lawrence LeMay wrote:
If it has a sun-2 multibus compatable ram card bigger
than 1 Meg, I could
use that. I'm still interested in getting my Sun 1/100u running
an old version of SunOS, but the machine only has 2 slots for ram
cards, and all I have are 1 Meg cards.
I'm not *totally* against cannibalizing machines for donor parts, but in
this case...
I guess it depends how much weight you give to the rarity factor when you
calculate the value/collectability of old machines, but Cadnetix and older
Daisy CAD stations are virtually extinct. I've spent about two years
trying, unsuccessfully, to find *any* other information about the one I
have. I finally tracked down one of the original engineers, a Mr. Wolfgang
Moritz, who was trying (again unsuccessfully) to put me in touch with some
of the people involved in the design of the system I own. I consider the
system I have, non-operational and all, to be the most interesting system
I own simply for the fact that it is the only one I've ever seen or even
heard about!
As someone just pointed out, these machines were really the pinacle of CAD
technology at the time of their release. Within the paperwork I got with
mine are several invoices for the original lease; the system cost tens of
thousands of dollars in the mid 80's. I'm not sure if you could get it to
do anything without a monitor/kbd/etc, but I think it's worth a few
dollars and the trouble to haul it home simply for the history and rarity
of the machine.
Just my .02,
Aaron
9:41 p.m.
On Wed, you wrote:
Hmmm, now it sounds interesting. I didn't see
any sign of a keyboard or
monitor for it. What does it use? Any idea what those big cables hanging
out of it are for? Do you want it? I can get it cheap. Hoepfully the
software is still on the hard drive. I don't have any use for it except
for parts and I'd rather not break it up if someone can use it.
Hmm...not sure about the cables/kbd/monitor...If it is Sun2-based, it may
very well use a standard type 2 kbd & mouse.
Personally I don't want it; it'd be a cool project but I've got a big stack
of those already. Do try to rescue it if you can though!
-Dave
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af-list＠lafleur.wfi-inc.com -
lemay＠cs.umn.edu -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
rigdonj＠intellistar.net