seeking Burroughs B6700 manuals and software

[Nigel Williams]

We would be glad to hear from anyone who might have new material
related to the Burroughs B6700.

We're on the hunt for any manuals or software related to the Burroughs
large systems so we can build an emulator for the B6700. This search
includes the B5000, B6000, B7000 families, since there is considerable
overlap across these families and collateral from one system family
can assist understanding another. Example models include B5500, B5700,
B6500, B7500, B6700, B7700, B6800, and B7800.

We were amazingly lucky with the B5500 to have so much of the critical
documentation (thanks Bitsavers!) and a complete suite of system
software, but even though the B6700 was more recent and produced in
larger numbers we're not having the same level of good fortune finding
artifacts.

What we have so far is documented here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JnMsyE8ssJi_-MUsK0rT9LPtNpeJCpTv1QrFw-917Y8/edit?usp=sharing

If you're interested in this system then you likely remember that it
had a particularly impressive front-panel display, seen here:

http://www.retrocomputingtasmania.com/home/projects/burroughs-b6700-mainframe#TOC-B6700-Display-Panel

This was known as the MDL display: Maintenance Diagnostics Logic
display. Because the MDL had the 4 x top-of-stack registers down to
the bit-level particular bit-patterns allowed words to be displayed.
The early MCPs put IDLE into the display during IO waits, and
subsequent releases: B for Burroughs, but sites quickly started
putting their own company initials or the time.

The Danish museum is so far the only place I've found that kept the MDL:

http://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Genstand:11000045_Konsolpanel_Burroughs_B6700

Thanks to Finn Verner Nielsen for being so helpful and undertaking an
expedition into their warehouse to locate and photograph the item for
us. On that DDHF web-page you will see on the left of the picture the
B7800 MDL they have too.

My goal is to also construct a replica of the B6700 MDL.


Steps undertaken so far:
Posts to newsgroups
Posts on LinkedIn, wikipedia, Yahoo groups
Emails to a few dozen people who were involved with the system
Trawling the Internet