Fairly Extensive Singer/Friden "System Ten" Computer System for Rescue

[Rick Bensene]

Through my Old Calculator Museum website, I have been contacted by a
gentleman that has a fairly substantial Singer/Friden
System 10 that is located in a building that the business wants to clear
out.

The computer system is slated to end up in a dumpster if it isn't
rescued.

The place the machine was stored is indoors, in an office-like space in
a larger warehouse style building.  The space was not temperature
controlled, but there are no signs of water damage or serious corrosion.
Some critters (probably mice) have been inside the cabinets of the
system, but the contact said that there were no obvious signs that they
chewed anything up.  The system is very dusty (it was not covered), and
it appears that some panels on the cabinets may have been removed, but
are probably with the system.
Some stuff appears to be partly disassembled.  There also might be some
spare parts, e.g., circuit boards.

The system consists of a CPU, probably a Model 20, two Model 80 Display
Terminals, a line printer of some sort, and two Mode 40 disk-pack (aka
dishwasher-sized) disk drives.   There are quite a few Model 41 disk
packs there..   There also appears to be some documentation.  There may
also be some kind of magtape drive with the system, as there is a rack
full of 7 or 9-track tapes hanging in it.  Not sure if these are
included with the system, though. 

Here is a link to some photos of the system:

http://pail.bensene.com/Singer10

Beware that the web host does not have much upstream bandwidth, and the
photos are pretty high resolution, so downloading them may take some
time.  Most of the photos are between 1.8 and 2.5 megabytes in size.

there is some documentation on the Singer System Ten up on Bitsavers at
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/singer/systemTen .  Some of the documentation
there is for the equipment that is available.

These systems aren't very common, and there likely aren't all that many
of them left in existence.  Singer sold a lot of these systems into
retail outlets as part of one of the first online Point-of-Sale systems.
One notable account was Sears and Roebuck, who installed a huge
networked (via Modem) environment using System Ten machines in stores to
run Point-of-Sale systems, with modem links to larger systems that
collected the information, and usually fed it to even larger systems
(e.g., IBM mainframe) for inventory management, bookkeeping, and other
large corporate-level reporting/management systems.      However, the
system aged quickly, as other competitors came onto the Point-of-Sale
scene very quickly, with systems that were less expensive, more
reliable, and more easily maintained.  Many of the Singer systems in
large retailers were replaced within a few years of being put into
service.  There was little market for "used" systems, so most all of
them taken out of service went for scrap.

The System 10 CPU was pretty unique in that it had "hardware"-based
timesharing.   The system managed time-slicing between "partitions" in
main memory (magnetic core) with hardware that provided a fixed
timeslice to each partition, switching to the next either when the
time-slice  ran out, or certain instructions (e.g., I/O) were executed
that would trigger an immediate context switch. The system had hardware
protection for the partitions to isolate the partitions from each other,
allowing them to run independently.  There was a shared and a read-only
system partition which could facilitate inter-partition communications
and management functions.
Pretty cool for a design done in the late '60's.   

It'd be a real shame for this system to end up in the trash, which is
exactly where it will go if a home can't be found for it relatively soon
(e.g., next couple of weeks).

The system is located in West Chicago, IL.   

It's all pretty sizable, so, you'd probably need a small
commercial-style moving van with a lift-gate (the stuff is likely quite
heavy, especially the disk drives) to haul it.  You would also probably
need a heavy-duty hand-truck or two, and some strong straps.   You'd
need some muscle, too.  I suspect it'd be more than a 1-man job.

My  contact wants it out of there.  You just have to come get it and
haul it away.   

If you have any serious interest in rescuing this system, drop me an
Email, and I'll put you in touch with my contact.

Hopefully someone out there can give this machine a new home.
Email:  rickb .at. bensene .dot. com


Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com