Will J

Will Jennings <xds_s...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I know I have asked before, but does anyone have any docs or software
> for this machine? I own one, and have close to none of either...
> I really would like to get it working...

For the love of God, why?? 'Twas a neat little machine in its day,
but that day was gone a long, long time ago.

And to answer your question, no. :-)

--Lee

ali

<l...@ber-dontspamme-tagnolli.net> wrote in message
news:alor3g$n6s$1@tyrol.bertagnolli.net...

> For the love of God, why?? 'Twas a neat little machine in its day,
> but that day was gone a long, long time ago.

Some people just like making old machines work. (Heck, I like getting
the most out of a machine and often regret the rapid advance of
hardware because we never get a chance to really push the software at
any given level.) Also, it's a way of preserving some history that's
otherwise being lost. I say more power to such people, and for the love
of God, don't try to discourage them. You can help, watch, listen, etc
without wanting to do it yourself.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
  -- Hamlet

Edward Reid

Peter.

"Will Jennings" <xds_s...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:185befc1.0209111259.4b1d2b0b@posting.google.com...

 l...@ber-dontspamme-tagnolli.net writes:
|> Will Jennings <xds_s...@hotmail.com> wrote:
|> > Hi,
|> > I know I have asked before, but does anyone have any docs or software
|> > for this machine? I own one, and have close to none of either...
|> > I really would like to get it working...
|>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|>
|> For the love of God, why?? 'Twas a neat little machine in its day,

One word, Rats.

scott

 "Peter" <pwcrowther"at"@yahoo"dot".co"dot".uk> writes:
|> You know I worked for Burroughs and Unisys for 27 years, but I can't for the
|> life of me remember what the the B80 looked like or what operating system it
|> ran. Was it a CMS machine?

My first impulse is to say BTOS, but I think that was the B20, rather
than the B80.   Have vague recollections of a System/80 from the sperry
side which was IBM (360?) compatible, but was terminated about the same time
as medium systems (v-series).

Perhaps the b80 was the system the B974 data comm processor was built on?
(No, that was the CP9500...)

scott

> You know I worked for Burroughs and Unisys for 27 years, but I can't for
the
> life of me remember what the the B80 looked like or what operating system
it
> ran. Was it a CMS machine?
>

Yes, it was a CMS machine.

> Peter.
>
> "Will Jennings" <xds_s...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:185befc1.0209111259.4b1d2b0b@posting.google.com...
> > Hi,
> > I know I have asked before, but does anyone have any docs or software
> > for this machine? I own one, and have close to none of either... I
> > really would like to get it working... I'd be interested in other old
> > Burroughs, etc. stuff too..
> >
> > Will J
>
>

> One word, Rats.

You are thinking of the B20 (Chopper Command was pretty cool, too).

The B80 was the little CMS machine that preceded that powerful data
processing system, the B90.

--Lee

Nope.  That was the B20.

Pete

Peter wrote:
> You know I worked for Burroughs and Unisys for 27 years, but I can't for the
> life of me remember what the the B80 looked like or what operating system it
> ran. Was it a CMS machine?
>
> Peter.

It looked a lot like a desk. You'd sit down at it and there was a
keyboard in front of you (blue keys on a black surface, with some
special function keys in addition to what you'd see on a typewriter) and
just beyond it the printing part which held  wide (computer, 14 7/8")
paper. The "works" were in one of the sides (white in color), and I
think there was a tape cassette drive and some sort of disk, probably an
8" minidisc. They might have also had some sort of display, possibly the
8 line by 40 character "self scan" orange-colored display like the TD700
terminal. If I recall the target market, it was sold to do accounting
applications at places that might have previously used the Burroughs "L"
series accounting machine. They did run CMS like the B800, but had the
aforementioned form factor. I think that the B80 was done in Cumbernauld
Scotland and Plymouth Michigan and that the B800 was from somewhere in
Pennsylvania; Downingtown, maybe. The B800 was more like a box with
lights on it and a separate video terminal and printer. The B90 and B900
  were their follow-ons. The B800 could also run an older operating
system, I think, but I forget what it was called. I think the B800 was
the successor of something called the "D Machine" which was also known
as a B700. It was a pretty flexible hardware platform. The same hardware
as the B700, though in a different package, was also used as a (the
model numbers 385 and 387 come to mind) disk pack controller, and there
were B874 and B974 versions of the B800 and B900 that acted as data
communications processors for Medium (B2000/3000/4000 or V Series) Systems.

When they took their turn to be discontinued, the upgrade path was to
the XE500 boxes which were essentially bigger-box (B800-size or a bit
smaller) multi-processor B20s. But in addition to the XE520 which ran
BTOS/CTOS, there was the XE550 which ran a kind of Unix called Centix
(in the Convergent lexicon; I forget what the Burroughs name was). These
  were the ones sold as the CMS replacements, and there was probably
some upgrade path.

I'm afraid that Burroughs did lose some of its customer base in both the
  L to B80 and the CMS to XE migrations, probably inevitable whenever
you don't have a simple box replacement.

--
Tom Herbertson
Unisys (Net2: 656 6427) Mail Stop 320, Mission Viejo CA 92691-2792 USA
Voice: +1 949 380 6427       mailto:tom.he...@unisys.com  (office)
FAX:   +1 949 380 6560    or mailto:herbe...@cox.net        (home)
- My opinions are my own; I do not speak for Unisys or anyone else -

The B20 ran BTOS, which was the Burroughs name for CTOS. It came from
Convergent Technologies which was a separate company at first, who also
sold the box thru other companies such as, I believe, NCR and maybe Mohawk.

The CP9500 was a version of the B800 or B900 (I forget which) that was
sold to the communications-processor add-on market rather than the
stand-alone-market. You'd use it, for example, as an RJE station, not an
accounting system. I think it could be a front-end to something, but
don't remember what. It still ran CMS, though.

For the B2000/3000/4000 systems, there was more than one way to do
networking. The B 874/974 was one way (and I don't think ran CMS in that
environment, but rather was driven by an NDL description), and there was
something called the CP3680 that was another way. The CP3680, I believe,
was based on a Hewlett-Packard minicomputer (that in turn may have had
some Burroughs inspiration in its development).

Wasn't the Sperry System/80 some sort of successor to RCA's attempt  to
crack the IBM mainframe market, the Spectra 70?

Many memories here are vague, so don't trust them 100%

--
Tom Herbertson
Unisys (Net2: 656 6427) Mail Stop 320, Mission Viejo CA 92691-2792 USA
Voice: +1 949 380 6427       mailto:tom.he...@unisys.com  (office)
FAX:   +1 949 380 6560    or mailto:herbe...@cox.net        (home)
- My opinions are my own; I do not speak for Unisys or anyone else -

> You know I worked for Burroughs and Unisys for 27 years, but I can't for the
> life of me remember what the the B80 looked like or what operating system it
> ran. Was it a CMS machine?
>

Yep. Sort of L8000 in a Star Wars plastic casing with a built-in Self
Scan (gas) display. CMS on top of SL7, I think.

Ian

Ah, SL7. The B700 was the first machine that I worked on when I started at
Burroughs. A single processing system that my customers used for the BMS
accounting package (we called it Bankruptcy Made Simple). There was a Cobol
compiler on the medium system, which produced object code (?) on punched
card to be loaded onto the B700. Then they brought out an onboard Cobol
compiler - it could take three hours to tell you that a full stop was
missing.

Ah the good (?) old days!

Peter.

>For the B2000/3000/4000 systems, there was more than one way to do
>networking. The B 874/974 was one way (and I don't think ran CMS in that
>environment, but rather was driven by an NDL description), and there was
>something called the CP3680 that was another way. The CP3680, I believe,
>was based on a Hewlett-Packard minicomputer (that in turn may have had
>some Burroughs inspiration in its development).
>

The HP 1000 had two 16 bit accumulators (named A & B), and two index
registers (X & Y).  The old Motorola 6800 and Mostek 6502 look to be very
HP 1000 inspired.

>Wasn't the Sperry System/80 some sort of successor to RCA's attempt  to
>crack the IBM mainframe market, the Spectra 70?
>

                                - Tim

B700 core memory, max 32KBy, yes kilobytes, most customers only had 16
installed.

B800 IC memory and DC processor, can run native B700 MCP or CMS.

B80  the B800 cpu made on four chips the 'fried eggs ones' the console
(Print and keyboard) was same as the L9000, without the mag stripe ledger
mechanics, the display was the 'self-scan' (TD700 screen),it ran CMS and a
L's emulator on cassette.

B90  same as the B80 but at higher integration density and smaller print
unit, it was about a quarter the size of the B80 and 3 times as powerful.
Last one to emulate the L's.

B900 more integrated and multiprocessor, up to 7 cpu's still running CMS, no
more mechanical console, a TD830 was standard.
B9250, B9550, B974 was really the same machine with specialized DC
functions.

From that on the CMS OS was carried over to the B1800 series, B19XX up to
the last one the B1965/95, the GEM aka Goleta Ending Machine, I helped
disassemble the last one in Tampa circa 1998.

The B874 was unrelated to the B800, it was a pure front-end for DC on medium
systems, there were customized versions for special purposes, like the B875,
a dual B874 for SWIFT.

"Peter" <pwcrowther"at"@yahoo"dot".co"dot".uk> wrote in message

One of the fanciest coding forms I've ever seen.  Circular so you could
optimize placement of the next instruction.

Also wasn't the B80 running CMS over SL5?

Victor A. Garcia wrote:

> Oh yes, the good old times.....let's see if I can remember the whole series,
> I started working in calculators, L2/5/8000, B700, nowadays I work in
> everything from desktop PC's to NX6830's.
>

|> For the B2000/3000/4000 systems, there was more than one way to do
|> networking. The B 874/974 was one way (and I don't think ran CMS in that
|> environment, but rather was driven by an NDL description), and there was
|> something called the CP3680 that was another way. The CP3680, I believe,
|> was based on a Hewlett-Packard minicomputer (that in turn may have had
|> some Burroughs inspiration in its development).

HP2000, if I recall correctly (maybe HP1000).   FEP's were more popular with the
large customers than the DCP's.   Hooked to medium systems with a
magenetic tape (9-track) DLP.

As I recall, the 874 used a modified host-transfer (disk) DLP and
the 974 used an ISC DLP + an ISC HUB.

scott

On Thu, 12 Sep 2002 18:04:53 -0700, Tom Herbertson
<herbe...@cox.net> wrote:

>It looked a lot like a desk. You'd sit down at it and there was a
>keyboard in front of you (blue keys on a black surface, with some
>special function keys in addition to what you'd see on a typewriter) and
>just beyond it the printing part which held  wide (computer, 14 7/8")
>paper. The "works" were in one of the sides (white in color), and I
>think there was a tape cassette drive and some sort of disk, probably an
>8" minidisc. They might have also had some sort of display, possibly the
>8 line by 40 character "self scan" orange-colored display like the TD700
>terminal. If I recall the target market, it was sold to do accounting
>applications at places that might have previously used the Burroughs "L"
>series accounting machine. They did run CMS like the B800, but had the
>aforementioned form factor. I think that the B80 was done in Cumbernauld
>Scotland and Plymouth Michigan and that the B800 was from somewhere in
>Pennsylvania; Downingtown, maybe.

Yeah, the B800's and B900's were made in Downingtown.  The CP9500 was
a B900 with a different skin and sold as a datacom front end (and only
the low profile cabinet, I think).

My favorite memory about the B800 was that whenever I opened the disk
cabinet door if I let it touch a chair it set off a static discharge
that re-booted the machine.  And those removable disk platters that
held a whopping 1MB!

I liked programming in MPLII and later Blaise.

-Mitch

I try to remember CMS was entirely MPLII, but the hardware was capable to
run SL5, we use to have the emulator in a cassette, load it and play Golf
and Lunar Lander on the B80, the B90 was unable to play Golf, since the
printer (console) was not compatible with the L's one.

"Larry Glamb" <lgl...@cybertech-india.com> wrote in message
news:3D861295.8090805@cybertech-india.com...

The B900/CP9500 skins remind me of a funny story - I was in the office
working on a new B900 when an engineer came in saying that he needed to
convert it to a CP9500. I said I'd stop what I was doing and let him have
the machine. He said it's OK don't stop - then proceeded to strip off the
B900 signs from the processor and stick on new CP9500 stripes - then he
said, that's it, done - and off he went.

Peter.

Peter.

"Victor A. Garcia" <vgar...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:AGuh9.51919$R7.1150831@twister.tampabay.rr.com...

>
> Also wasn't the B80 running CMS over SL5?
>

Certainly wasn't native SL5 - I was still working in SL5 when it
appeared. Might have been SL9 - I've slept since then.

Ian

There's the Burroughs collection at the Charles Babbage Institute
(University of Minnesota)
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/inv/burros/burfindx.htm

Most of the collection doesn't seem to be online, but if you click on
the Burroughs Corporate Images Database link and then on Begin Searching
you can find some stuff.

|In article <alor3g$n6s$1...@tyrol.bertagnolli.net>,
| l...@ber-dontspamme-tagnolli.net writes:
||> Will Jennings <xds_s...@hotmail.com> wrote:
||> > Hi,
||> > I know I have asked before, but does anyone have any docs or software
||> > for this machine? I own one, and have close to none of either...
||> > I really would like to get it working...
||>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
||>
||> For the love of God, why?? 'Twas a neat little machine in its day,
|
|One word, Rats.

Available for PC.  Next?

Where ??? It's been many years since I enjoyed a game of Rats.

>For the B2000/3000/4000 systems, there was more than one way to do
>networking. The B 874/974 was one way (and I don't think ran CMS in that
>environment, but rather was driven by an NDL description), and there was
>something called the CP3680 that was another way. The CP3680, I believe,
>was based on a Hewlett-Packard minicomputer (that in turn may have had
>some Burroughs inspiration in its development).

There was a company called SRI.  I forget what SRI stood for, but it's not
Stanford Research Institute.  (And it's not Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor.)
There were some other companies called SRI as well.

Anyway, this SRI made third party hardware for Burroughs users.  They had
two very successful products:  The SRI/Century terminal and the SRI Front
End Processor.  The SRI FEP connected through a tape channel, and the Medium
System MCP thought it was a pair of tape drives, labeled FEPIN and FEPOUT.
At the time they were better than anything you could get from Burroughs so
Burroughs bought the company.  The terminal became the SR100 (later SR110)
terminal and the SRI FEP became CP3680.  Burroughs put a change into the MCP
so it knew the FEP wasn't a tape drive.  Until that time, a fumble fingered
operator could cause the MCS to come up and grab a scratch tape as FEPOUT.
--
RB |\  © Randall Bart
aa |/  ad...@RandallBart.spam.com               Bart...@att.spam.net
nr |\  Please reply without spam      I LOVE YOU       1-917-715-0831
dt ||\ http://RandallBart.com/      DOT-HS-808-065      MS^7=6/28/107
a   |/          "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who
l   |\         said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees
l   |/       with your own reason and your own common sense."--Buddha

>There was a Cobol
>compiler on the medium system, which produced object code (?) on punched
>card to be loaded onto the B700.

I believe the cross-compiler was LCOBOL (not to be confused with COBOLL).

--
RB |\  © Randall Bart
aa |/  ad...@RandallBart.spam.com               Bart...@att.spam.net
nr |\  Please reply without spam      I LOVE YOU       1-917-715-0831
dt ||\ http://RandallBart.com/      DOT-HS-808-065      MS^7=6/28/107
a   |/          "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who
l   |\         said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees
l   |/       with your own reason and your own common sense."--Buddha

The B874/75, never run CMS, it never had Disk interface, just the cassette
and the HT connection.
The B974, did it, it was a B900 with special code for the BNA controller,
other than that, it was a standard CMS machine.

New Page 1 .... Bush ..... Knew ...... 9-11, we'll never forget The death
ones.... The Heroes..... The American People..... The Oilman from TX, that
sold them.
"Randall Bart" <Bart...@att.spam.net> wrote in message
news:cg3qouooeubk1d03is0rkb94460almq9u8@4ax.com...

"Randall Bart" <Bart...@att.spam.net> wrote in message

> 'Twas Fri, 13 Sep 2002 10:54:49 +0100 when all comp.sys.unisys stood in
awe
> as "Peter" <pwcrowther"at"@yahoo"dot".co"dot".uk> uttered:
>
> >There was a Cobol
> >compiler on the medium system, which produced object code (?) on punched
> >card to be loaded onto the B700.
>
> I believe the cross-compiler was LCOBOL (not to be confused with COBOLL).
> --

As an operator working for Burroughs in the late 1970s we knew all about
LCOBOL as it formed. the majority of our work on night shift. We got to know
the compiler quite well and could tell how far the compilation had got by
watching the lights representing the processor registers. In particular
there was a sort phase in which the comparison indicator lights changed in
apparent intensity as the sort moved towards completion.

I remember whan our huge 1000 kilodigit B4700 was replace by an older, core
store device with much less memory. Our long nights of LCOBOL compilations
got even longer as we could do less multiprocessing (I think the compiler
needed about 200kd) - and our clinets bills went up because the elapsed time
became longer.

But my main memory of those days was the other cross-compiler that produced
'link payroll' for the L/TC series visual record computers (I can't remeber
what the compiler was called). Whenever the UK tax laws, or rates, changed
we had a weekend of overtime on the Medium System, producing many hundred
paper tapes with updated payroll programs. By the end of the shift rolling
all that paper tape meant your thumbs had had the prints abraded off and
there was a nice set of nicks where you had let the edge of the tape touch
your skin. Several companies payroll paper tapes were bloodstained - but who
cares? We were on overtime at time-and-a-half.

As I remember the 'single density' removable disk was about 1.2MB, and there
was a 'double density' version which held about 2.2MB (plus there was a
cabinet available equipped with similar fixed disks, I don't remember the
capacity).  They all used *huge* solenoids to drive the heads along a radial
axis, rather than arcs as used these days.  It was very rare to find two
double density drives with the same alignment, so it was often desirable to
have the disk formatted on the end user's drive before you copied data to
t  -  that way there was a greater likelihood of them being able to read it!

There were two form factors for both B80s and B90s.  B80s came in a
rectangular or L-shaped desk configuration  -  veterans of Manchester, UK,
will remember a certain story relating to an L-shaped B80  -  and B90s had a
normal desk size B92, and a small (by comparison) B91.

B80s were usually equipped with two 1MB 8" floppy drives in an over and
under configuration (the bottom one just at the right height for unwanted
contamination by the factory-owner's dog!), and the B90s normally had the
dual 3MB 8" floppy drive which was the same physical dimensions as an
earlier 1MB drive.

The 3MB drives were twinned side-by-side drives with opposite-opening
aluminium flaps, electrically operated when they decided to co-operate, with
slots at one side for the empty plastic outer sleeves which protected the
media and were used to insert and extract the disk.  I believe these were
also designed to hold 5MB (and came up as a unit type of MD5 - what a give
away), but the story was that the media was never reliable enough so the
smaller radius (higher areal density) portion of the disk was unused.  These
disks came pre-formatted, and couldn't be user formatted.  There were a
number of tracks set aside for reallocation in place of bad sectors.  Once
these were full the disk became unusable.  However, when you got a set of
dirty heads you could permanently trash three floppies before you came to
that conclusion.

I never realised I was such a sad individual until you folks started me off
remembering this stuff  -  please stop it at once!

Adrian.

Will J

Then the bank hired a consultant to advise on telecoms.  He came up with
the bright idea of using them as fully fledged branch systems that would
work offline and send in the transaction files using a daily dial-up, thus
saving a fortune in line rentals.  Crucially, they'd also hold a mini
account ledger that could be updated in real time and then synched once or
twice a day.  

The bank went for this, and Burroughs came up with random access disk
software for SL5.  I helped the bank to figure out the fairly delphic
documentation and get it all working.

Things went fairly well until the second pilot, at a branch near the
docks.  The dust in the air made the floppy disks very unreliable.  The
system couldn't function without them.

When the programmers ran out of space in 64K, they'd just had a B90 with
128K delivered.  They used it - although if I remember correctly the
address space was limited to 64K, they no longer had to include the
firmware in that total.  Then they found that they couldn't run their code
on a B80.  Things collapsed slowly into acrimony and the deal was
eventually cancelled.

I still have my SL3 quick reference guide which was the essential tool to
be able to hand compile your SL3/5 code into hex.
regards

John Holden

In article <8aWj9.1429$hc1...@newsfep3-gui.server.ntli.net>,

adrian.b...@ntlworld.com (Adrian Buckmaster) wrote:
>
> There were two form factors for both B80s and B90s.  B80s came in a
> rectangular or L-shaped desk configuration  -  veterans of Manchester,
> UK,
> will remember a certain story relating to an L-shaped B80  -  and B90s
> had a
> normal desk size B92, and a small (by comparison) B91.
>
> B80s were usually equipped with two 1MB 8" floppy drives in an over and
> under configuration (the bottom one just at the right height for
> unwanted
> contamination by the factory-owner's dog!), and the B90s normally had
> the
> dual 3MB 8" floppy drive which was the same physical dimensions as an
> earlier 1MB drive.

Ivars Osis

"Will Jennings" <xds_s...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:185befc1.0209111259.4b1d2b0b@posting.google.com...

> Hi,
> I know I have asked before, but does anyone have any docs or software
> for this machine? I own one, and have close to none of either... I

On Wednesday, September 11, 2002 4:59:37 PM UTC-4, Will Jennings wrote:
> Hi,
> I know I have asked before, but does anyone have any docs or software
> for this machine? I own one, and have close to none of either... I
> really would like to get it working... I'd be interested in other old
> Burroughs, etc. stuff too..
>
> Will J

On 7/17/14 8:10 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> I guess I need to another (not as good) newsfeed so I can see these
> old messages and not just the replies to them.  If this stuff is
> coming strictly from google it is long past time to start petitioning
> their upstream feeds to cut them off.
>

>In article <lq8o59$94h$1...@dont-email.me>,
>        Al Kossow <a...@bitsavers.org> writes:
>> On 7/16/14 4:31 PM, sha...@rae.org wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, September 11, 2002 4:59:37 PM UTC-4, Will Jennings wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> I know I have asked before, but does anyone have any docs or software
>>>> for this machine? I own one, and have close to none of either... I
>>>> really would like to get it working... I'd be interested in other old
>>>> Burroughs, etc. stuff too..
>>>>
>>>> Will J
>>>
>>> I supported a few B80 customers. RPG and COBOL on a primitive screen and keyboard to console printer. I always said that the B80 was better than the B90 because at least the B80 didn't pretend to be multi-user.
>>>
>>
>> You do realize you're replying to a 12 year old message?
>> I'd be surprised if Will still had the machine.
>>
>> Hans Pufal is the only person I can think of who worked software for that series who
>> might still be around
>>
>
>I guess I need to another (not as good) newsfeed so I can see these
>old messages and not just the replies to them.  If this stuff is
>coming strictly from google it is long past time to start petitioning
>their upstream feeds to cut them off.

On 7/17/14 6:07 PM, Marc Wilson wrote:

> If you're relying on Google for news

hji...@synthesis-mc.de writes:
>Am Freitag, 13. September 2002 03:25:19 UTC+2 schrieb Tom Herbertson:

>
>VS/9 was unfortunately abendoned - if my memory serves in the late 80's - and the System/80 series did exist for a while running OS/3

Paul Kimpel <paul....@digm.com> writes:
>-------- Original Message  --------
>Subject: Burroughs B80
>From: d01...@gmail.com
>To:
>Date: 3/22/2017 2:56 PM
>
>> Might be a little late to this party, but I kept the full set of
>> documentation and service records for a B80 when I inherited it.
>> Unfortunately I couldn't keep the hardware. Hit me up at d01821 at
>> the gmail if anyone's interested.
>>
>
>I would suggest that you consider donating them to the Computer History
>Museum in Mountain View, California. The way to start that process is to
>look on their web site at their artifact donation policy and fill out
>the Donation Form:
>
>     http://www.computerhistory.org/artifactdonation/