Burroughs B80
Will Jennings
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
l...@ber-dontspamme-tagnolli.net
> 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
alienII
What i know : this processor was used as maintenance processor for the B6900
(1981-198x).
ali
<l...@ber-dontspamme-tagnolli.net> wrote in message
news:alor3g$n6s$1...@tyrol.bertagnolli.net...
Edward Reid
wrote
> 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
life of me remember what the the B80 looked like or what operating system it
ran. Was it a CMS machine?
Peter.
"Will Jennings" <xds_s...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:185befc1.02091...@posting.google.com...
Scott Lurndal
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
Scott Lurndal
"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
Thinker
"Peter" <pwcrowther"at"@yahoo"dot".co"dot".uk> wrote in message
news:_h1g9.408$gc1....@newsfep1-gui.server.ntli.net...
> 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.
l...@ber-dontspamme-tagnolli.net
> 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
Pete Hornby
"Scott Lurndal" <sc...@slp53.sl.home> wrote in message
news:lF4g9.137$DW.59...@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...
Nope. That was the B20.
Pete
Tom Herbertson
> 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.her...@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 -
Tom Herbertson
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%
Ian Dalziel
> 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
Peter
news:bb91f9f0.02091...@posting.google.com...
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.
Tim McCaffrey
>
>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 CP3680 was based on the HP 1000 (21MX) mini-computer, with custom
microcode. The Burroughs inspired mini was the HP 3000 (a stack
machine). The CP3680 could also be a terminal front end for the
HP 3000. Note that the CP3680 was really a FEP, not a network
processor.
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?
>
I think this became the OS/3 systems? Unisys had a re-microcoded micro-A
(SCAMP) product to upgrade those customers one last time.
- Tim
George Gray
last of the series of machines that started with the UNIVAC 9200 in
1967. The intention was to cover the low end of the IBM 360 series.
The 9200 was followed by the 9300, 9400, and 9700. In 1971, when RCA
got out of the computer business, Sperry bought that product line
(Series 70, formerly Spectra 70) and merged it with its own 9000 line.
In 1973, Sperry started shipping the Series 90 computers (90/30 up
through the virtual memory 90/80) as a follow-on to the 9000 and
Series 70 models. These computers had their own operating systems and
software; the IBM compatibility was only at the instruction set level.
The System 80 was announced in 1980 to provide newer models for the
low end of the Series 90. The high-end customers were encouraged to
convert to the 1100 series, and some did. After the formation of
Unisys and the recession of 1991, it was announced that support of the
System 80 would be terminated at the end of the decade.
Victor A. Garcia
I started working in calculators, L2/5/8000, B700, nowadays I work in
everything from desktop PC's to NX6830's.
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
news:KBig9.2770$QQ3....@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net...
Larry Glamb
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?
Scott Lurndal
Tom Herbertson <herbe...@cox.net> writes:
|> 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
Mitchell Fisher
<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
Victor A. Garcia
memory disk, they were head-per-track, that's why it was easy to figure the
placement of the next instruction and optimize it so it will not require a
full revolution of the platter.
The platter motor was bigger than the one in most modern washing machines,
common failure was dropping the belt that joined motor and platter.
The logic backplane had pins that were jumpered to allow Write access for
each track, so if the disk was corrupted, the FE had to bring the set of
jumpers, install them and reload the OS from paper punched tapes, verify it
works, then remove the jumpers to make it ROM instead of RAM, the User
tracks were always R/W.
Sometimes, we forgot to remove the jumpers, and the machines ran for years
with the OS part wide open for overwrite, very few times that happens, a
tribute to the quality of the programmers of that era. Maybe M$ should train
their people on one L2000, before letting them mess with Windows code.
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...@cybertech-india.com...
Peter
"Mitchell Fisher" <mitchel...@unisys.com> wrote in message
news:3d86305f.868682015@trsvr...
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
pictures of this kit. Does anyone know if there's anything on a web site? If
not, if people have pictures (or can scan some) then I'd be happy to put
them on a site.
Peter.
"Victor A. Garcia" <vgar...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:AGuh9.51919$R7.11...@twister.tampabay.rr.com...
Ian Dalziel
>
>
Certainly wasn't native SL5 - I was still working in SL5 when it
appeared. Might have been SL9 - I've slept since then.
Ian
Hans Vlems
Frank Boyne
> All this nostalgia makes me think that it would be interesting to see
some
> pictures of this kit. Does anyone know if there's anything on a web
site?
There's the Burroughs collection at the Charles Babbage Institute
(University of Minnesota)
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/inv/burros/burfindx.htm
Most of the collection doesn't seem to be online, but if you click on
the Burroughs Corporate Images Database link and then on Begin Searching
you can find some stuff.
Will Jennings
computer.. : ) I'm pretty sure it runs CMS, though it isn't like I
have any manuals, just assorted 8 inch floppies. Mine has dual 8 inch
floppies, no cassette drive, and yes, it does have the cool looking
gas-plasma external display... Hopefully someone will have something
for this poor critter... It looks nearly as hopeless as my
Honeywell... But I wouldn't turn down other Burroughs/Unisys/Sperry
items, however main interest would be a "Sperry-Varry", or V70 series
Varian, as my dad used them a lot.. I have a 620/L-100, bet that will
take people back : )
Marc Wilson
wrote in <lF4g9.137$DW.59...@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com>::
Available for PC. Next?
John K
Marc Wilson <ma...@cleopatra.co.uk> wrote in message
news:b9fkousnhl7si5cih...@4ax.com...
Where ??? It's been many years since I enjoyed a game of Rats.
Randall Bart
as Tom Herbertson <herbe...@cox.net> uttered:
>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
Randall Bart
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).
Victor A. Garcia
The use of Tape Controllers/DLP's was force upon third party developers,
since it was the only Burroughs interface that was truly Open, published and
warranty by the company to stay that way, so a lot of products from other
companies used it to there were always to channels declared, TapeIN, and
TapeOUT, but most of the time they connect to a single DLP.
Macro use to sell one for Large systems, it was a PC which connect to a SCSI
DLP and beat out BNA and the CP2000 for about 1/10 of the price.
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:cg3qouooeubk1d03i...@4ax.com...
Ken Wheatley
> '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.
Adrian Buckmaster
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 Jennings
could never figure out much of what anyone can remember just from the
schematics for the console, which is all of my docs...
Will J
John Holden
connected by leased lines to the data centre. They'd have the capability
to work off-line in an emergency. They were to be programmed in SL5, like
the non-disk variant (the TC5000) and would probably have been just fine.
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>,
Ivars J. Osis
saw the field though.
Ivars Osis
"Will Jennings" <xds_s...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:185befc1.02091...@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
sha...@rae.org
> 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
Paul Kimpel
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/burroughs/B80/. There is more on that site for
the B700/800/900.
There is also a small amount of information on the B80 at
http://www.picklesnet.com/burroughs/descriptions/burroughs.htm.
I have some COBOL source code for a manufacturing application that ran
on the B800, and I think would run on the B80, but none of the data, and
absolutely none of the CMS system software.
--
Paul
Al Kossow
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
Bill Gunshannon
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.
bill
--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill...@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
Al Kossow
> 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.
>
They can regurgitate 12 year old posts, but it takes a month (if at
all) for something I posted to show up in their groups search.
I first noticed this when all the mentions of bitsavers disappeared
from the search results for the past year. A few have reappeared but
the volume has dropped to almost zero.
Marc Wilson
<c2q7a8...@mid.individual.net>::
>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.
If you're relying on Google for news- well. Welcome to a world of pain
(and unpopularity).
News.individual.net will do you a basic text newsfeed for about ten
bucks a year- with some sporge-filtering, too.
--
Marc Wilson
Cleopatra Consultants Limited - IT Consultants
Fernrhoyd, Chester Road, Alpraham, Tarporley, Cheshire CW6 9JE
Tel: (44/0) 1829 262696 Tel: (44/0) 161 408 6449
Fax: (44/0) 844 779 0968 Mobile: (44/0) 7973 359850
Skype: cleo-marc Mail: enqu...@cleopatra.co.uk
Web: http://www.cleopatra.co.uk
Registered in England and Wales no: 2588943 VAT Reg: 561 1182 69
Registered office: St George's House, 215-219 Chester Road
Manchester M15 4JE
https://plus.google.com/100816173414569062406
Al Kossow
> If you're relying on Google for news
Unfortunately, there appears to be no useful free search tool for Usenet
which was what Google groups search was OK for until recently
Marc Wilson
interface, it's worse.
Bill Gunshannon
Google. But that isn't the solution. The solution is to get whoever
is providing Google with a connection to USENET to pull the plug. That
is how USENET survived all these years and i see no reason to make an
exception for Google. If they can't play by the rules, throw them out
of the sandbox.
Bill Gunshannon
pay them to fudge the results in their favor.
hji...@synthesis-mc.de
snip ...
>
> 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.her...@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 -
Tom,
there where the Series 90 systems, they did run OS/3 for the low end machines, 90/25, 90/30, 90/40 and the 90/60, 90/70 and 90/80 running VS/9 which had been developed based on the RCA technology.
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
Scott Lurndal
>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
mike....@gmail.com
If anybody out there is still interested, I know quite a lot about the CMS era regarding the above small systems. For example, I "acquired" an extended memory address (XMA) processor for the first B80, so that I could increase its memory above 64k - it eventually had 256K which I believe became the highest configured B80 in the UK.
I've enjoyed reading this thread and will contribute further if there are any similar-minded people out there!
d01...@gmail.com
Paul Kimpel
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/
Their curatorial staff will then review the information and get back to
you.
Another option is to send the documentation to bitsavers.org (which is
associated with the museum) so they can scan it and put it on line.
Please feel free to contact me privately if you need help setting any of
this up.
--
Paul
Scott Lurndal
>-------- 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/
a running V380.
neilE1024
I know I am very late to this conversation but would like to contact the person who posted as "mike....@gmail.com" on 30 October 2014 as it appears we have a lot in common on this subject and may have worked for the same company in Manchester.
Anthony Stewart
I found this...
"Burroughs learned from his experience with the B80 and developed the B90 range accordingly.
The B90 was fully compatible with the B80. It came with a narrow printer or a large printer - and two dot matrix models. It used the CMS operating system, and also used the KeyBMS application suite. There were two key differences between the B90 and the B80. Firtsly, the B90 was faster. But secondly, the B90 introduced a 3 MB floppy disk, and the base model was equipped with a dual floppy-disk drive. The B90 could also use all peripherals from the B80 and B700 ranges.
The 3 MB floppy drive was sensitive to temperature due to the relatively high density of the data stored on the disk. The drive should periodically recalibrate itself automatically for a few seconds to make sure it could continue to read and write data accurately. When it was not re-calibrated, the 3 MB floppy disk was fast. As the technology was impressive, just as a 3MB was held on an 8-inch floppy disk, and the alternative was 2.1MB held on a disk cartridge that was approximately 18-inches in diameter and 3-inches deep.
The B90 range was introduced around 1980. However, Burroughs had escaped the fact that new microcomputers, such as the Apple 1 and Commodore PET, had already been used by businesses, and that they could do a lot and cost less. Apple Computer was created in 1976. IBM launched the personal computer "in the United States in 1981. In 1983, when the IBM PC was launched in Europe, Burroughs and the other top-ten computer companies of the day realized that they had been caught caught off guard.
To develop a new microcomputer to compete against IBM and Apple computers would take too long, and so Burroughs (like other top-ten computer companies) went to convergent technology and re-distinguish rights to their latest desk-top computer business bought. like your own product. This became the Burroughs B20."
