youtube video of a runnning XDS Sigma mainframe with lots of nice peripherals

Lee Courtney leec2124 at gmail.com
Sat Oct 31 12:41:15 CDT 2015


Hi Pierre,

Sorry forgot to address this in my original email...

"There's also a Data General minicomputer and Honeywell mainframe equipment.
Can anybody identify the Honeywell stuff? It's Level 6000 style, but
it's strange to me that there seems to be just this one cabinet along the
rest of the XDS equipment. Maybe a Datanet option?"

When Honeywell bought the Sigma mainframe business from Xerox in 1975 it
agreed to continue support and provide upgrades. One of these was
interfacing various peripherals and upgraded memory. The Honeywell box
George had connected to the Sigma-9 was a solid state memory. It was not a
stand-along Honeywell computer, just semiconductor memory rather than core
memory that was originally used on the Sigma-9

Yes, he did have a DG minicomputer in the room also. I never saw it run.

Lee C.


On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 4:15 AM, P Gebhardt <p.gebhardt at ymail.com> wrote:

> Hello list,
>
> spotted this video recently on youtube:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQzDSOXHd70
>
> It's a Xerox Digital Systems mainframe! Wow, I didn't know that such
> installations were still running as of 1997!
>
> The computer room is quite untidy. Andybody has an idea, where with was
> filmed?
>
>
> There's also a Data General minicomputer and Honeywell mainframe equipment.
> Can anybody identify the Honeywell stuff? It's Level 6000 style, but
> it's strange to me that there seems to be just this one cabinet along the
> rest of the XDS equipment. Maybe a Datanet option?
>
>
> There are *very* nice close views on running CDC disk drives using the
> 100/200MB disk packs.
> I was looking for a long time for a video actually showing how the big
> head actuator
>
> of these drives moves when performing data operations!
>
> And there are nice reel tape drives which look to me like rebadged IBM
> drives (not sure, though).
>
> Enjoy watching it! I did!
>
>
> Kind regards,
> Pierre
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Pierre's collection of classic computers moved to:
> http://www.digitalheritage.de
>



-- 
Lee Courtney
+1-650-704-3934 cell


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