On 2/5/2015 1:58 PM, Al Kossow wrote: Short answer is yes. but the whole story will require quite a bit of information about what you have and want to do. Contact offline, as this sort of thread could get very long. and probably bore the hell out of people for quite a bit of it. I'll be glad to help you figure out what you have if that is why you are asking. if you want to make a list for some project, I can probably help with that too. jim

On 2/6/2015 1:15 PM, Ian McLaughlin wrote: The MAI Basic 4 system which was based on the Microdata 1600 to my knowledge was distributed via disk media. I did not see any half inch tape with Basic 4 on any systems, which is the other alternative. Basic 4 moved on to their own implementation which was somewhat binary compatible with the 1600 implementation, which I think incorporated some bit slice technology. The next turn moved to microprocessor designs. I had a copy of the firmware from a system at one point in my pile from a system I got the remains of. Richard, please also contact me offline. I already got a reply from Ian privately, and we can discuss things. I'd prefer that discussion method. I have recently gotten a large stash of Multi 8, Intertechnique documentation, which I will be getting to Al, as well. Intertechnique made the first clone of the 1600 under license from Microdata. If the media was available other than with the disks, I'd certainly like to know, but I visited Basic 4, and I believe they used disk backup at that time. thanks Jim

On 2/7/2015 3:51 AM, Armin Diehl wrote: These are very nice photos. Both of your systems appear to be on the Microdata form factor, and if you were to look at the edge card connector, it is probably a 130 pin (65 x 2) connector.74181 ALU chips. I see a lot of what appears to be the scale logic that a 1600 type CPU or an advanced design could use on that the boards your photographed. Also the of the 4 switches are they all dual position, or are some momentary? i believe that Basic 4 in this series of system kept the 4 sense switches of the 1600 in their hardware with similar functions across all variations. The QIC drives were emerging in the late 70's and early 80's as a storage media, but in the era of the original blue systems with Microdata CPUs they were not around. Very nice systems. I don't know how much Century Trident info I have to offer, but I may have documents if Bitsavers does not. I just got a stash of documentation which comes from the direction of Pick Systems documentation. They used the 80, 100 and I think 200mb Tridents for their Evolution systems. Thanks Jim The Microdata 1600 cpu will have two

I see your UBC email address, so you may be interested to know that the BB-II machine I acquired in the 90s was originally from the project that constructed Revelstoke dam. From the software that was installed on it, it appears to have been used for both engineering calculations as well as payroll. Ian

Because of the combined usage, I suspect it was from one of the many subcontractors working on the project. It didn?t travel far - I?m in Kelowna. I under-estimated how long ago I got the machine. Replaying the timeline in my mind, it was 1987 or 1988. A friend of a friend contacted me because he knew I was into electronics and computers, and said that his dad had this ?old computer thing? in a barn that he wanted moved. It was going to go to the dump if I didn?t pick it up. It was this huge blue rack cabinet with a smoked plexiglass front cover. It was *HEAVY*. I begged another friend to borrow a pick-up truck, and we hauled it out of the barn, and into my second-floor apartment. This was before the recognizable internet, so trying to find information was very difficult. After putting out feelers, I found out that there was an ex-MAI technician in Vernon (the next town over). That was a fruitful meeting that got me a whole pile of documentation and other information for the machine - enough to restore it and get it up and running. In fact, I guess that machine is what put me on my career path today - that ex-MAI technician and I formed our community?s first ISP a couple of years later, and my employment has been directly connected to the Internet ever since. It pains me that the machine and I parted company, and I?d love to find another one. Ian

On 2/7/2015 4:28 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote: Microdata Reality or Pick reality was not marketed by Pick or Microdata with any domain specific support. The systems were sold originally by MD thru a network of about 30 dealers, who added or developed software systems to support all sorts of fields. MAI was closer to the different software specialties, and I think took ownership early on selling MRP and so forth, systems. I knew of a lot of contractors that worked for MAI Basic 4 and they wanted to have MAI to have a product that was a complete solution. They also built up / acquired Sorbus which did service on a lot of systems to further that. Sort of a small IBM type company, since they never came close to the size and scale of IBM. I don't know if a lot of customers programmed the Basic 4 systems, or go them installed and went on with whatever they delivrered to their core business. Since I worked for Microdata, and also was and am in the Pick world, i saw a lot of people buy systems and since Pick systems all came with a nice manual, ended up sucked into the software development world, some to the detriment of their original day jobs. Pick has a sort of siren song type of aura around it, especially in the 70's when you didn't have a zillion languages, and what you have today. Though it was proprietary, Pick was and in its generic form, for instance D3, or Open-QM (you can download and run that) is very easy to program. Problem in today age is it is still the old timeshare terminal model. Most pick systems are wrapped in code to make them all web capable and all that. Glen, Basic 4 and Pick are completely isolated from one another and have no bearing whatever on each other. I see that Armin has an excellent page on the B4 systems, and you might notice his photos of the BB2 systems have only the 1.2mb front loading disks. I don't know if he has any data from them of if anyone does, but that would be necessary to have before working on any way to run an emulated system. Thanks Jim