Talk:UNIVAC
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Univac page consolidation
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump on Thursday, June 12th, 02003.
Help! Help! Help! I'm drowning! :-S I thought it would be a good idea to direct all the precursors and descendants of Univac to that central article, since it seemed to provide a comprehensive overview of how all those companies merged... But now when I read closer, it seems that 'Sperry Corporation' separated from the pack, only to swerwe back into the fray very late in the game. It definitely isn't as clear cut as I Thought it would be. I Really hope I haven't gone overboard; It just seemed that many of those articles were just linking into each and every other of each other, when they really only covered the same historical ground. But I starting to get doubts, did I simplify things too much. Any comments wellcome. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 13:27 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)
- It was also a rather interesting exercise a while back when I untangled all the Univac, UNIVAC, and UNIVAC I links that pointed to each other. I sure this is far from complete and often gets retangled. -- RTC 18:29 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)
-
- Still unraveling these names, I hope they settle down soon. The current usage is:
- UNIVAC - Article on the company
- Univac - Redirect to the article on the company
- UNIVAC I - Article on the computer (although it was originally called UNIVAC, when it was the only computer they made)
-
- -- RTC 19:43, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
- I think that the article needs to be rewritten to eliminate the first person (e.g. "I joined ECC... " I put {wikify}, but I'm not sure if that is the correct term. Bubba73 3 July 2005 23:34 (UTC)
There seems to be a Sperry article, a Unisys article and a Univac article. My father worked for this company for over 30 years, and it seems to me that before Unisys became Unisys, it was Sperry Univac. Hate to throw more mud into the name game here....I'll have to research that. NickBurns 15:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
As far as i know (working for unisys) there was no company calles univac, the name univac was a synonym for computer back in these days. Due that Univac is a product line there are some strange issues because of all that mergering in unisys history, first there was remingtong rand, and they took over the eckert mauchly corp, which produced the eniac, first of all they introduced the Univac 1 wich was the first commercial mainframe after that. in 1955 sperry rand an remington rand merged then the univac product came from sperry rand, aka sperry (they dropped the rand somewhere) in 1986 the merged with bouroughs and became unisys see also http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/history/ after that Univac was dropped and became the sperry/unisys 2200 series. which was renamed to Clearpath in 1995 (still compatible with the univac operating systems and also to the bourroughs operating systems)
and as far as i know there was a business division of Sperry called Sperry UNIVAC, but it was juts a business division
greetz digital
[edit] UNIVAC Solid State is NOT an upgraded UNIVAC II
The UNIVAC Solid State and the UNIVAC II are totally different machines with no relationship.
[edit] Some more 1970s details for UNIVAC
I worked in a shop (from 1972 - 1977) that had a UNIVAC 9400 mainframe. The UNIVAC 9400 CPU was very similar to an IBM 360/30. We even used the IBM assembler language textbook to learn how to program it.
Facts that I can recall from memory about the 9400...
o It used Plated Wire memory (64K per cabinet, we started out with 2 cabinets (128K) and ended up with 3 (192K)). IIRC, the UNIVAC 9480 was the same as the 9400, except it used very early solid state memory.
o The 9400 has a multitasking OS (we could run several batch jobs at one time)
o We had two UNIVAC 1004 systems (with channel adapters installed) as unit-record devices for the 9400.
o Original tape drives were 800/1600 BPI, and later we upgraded to 800/1600/6250 BPI
o We had removable hard disk drive (20MB and maybe 30MB iirc)
o UNIVAC 0768 line printer (rotating drum, just like the printer in the 1004's)
o Some 1004's read (and punched) 90-column cards. The two that we had were the 80-column versions (rectangular holes, compatible with IBM systems). 90-column cards had round holes, 45 columns across the top and 45 across the bottom edge. They were the same card dimension as the 80-column cards, just different types of holes and distributions.
o Our system supported assembler, Fortran, COBOL and RPG.
o The operating system (called a supervisor) was custom assembled from macro statements. You coded a series of statements defining your IO devices and desired options, then assembled the supervisor and loaded it onto the proper location on a disk pack for loading.
o There were switches on the front of the CPU that defined the boot target address (channel and device). We usually booted from disk, but I did try a tape boot one time and it worked (albeit slowly).
o The operating system for the 9400/9480 was called OS/4
o vaguely, I seem to recall that UNIVAC also made a 9300, although I never saw one.
-
- I worked for Sperry UNIVAC in 1971-1972 on the AMME project. We developed on and for the 9400, and made occasional use of 9200s and 9300s. I expanded the article to include some of what I remember, but I did not cite sources. We seem to have a dearth of sources in general. There was also a 9400ASP if I recall correctly, but I never workes on it. It was a 9400 re-purposed as an intelligent peripheral controller for the 110x machines. Arch dude 04:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] UNIAC
Should the article also refer to the alternative "UNIAC" terminology? I have seen this machine called UNIAC in a number of places [1], [2].
- That information appears to be bogus. The name UNIVAC has been used since the days
of Eckert-Mauchly Computer. --John Nagle 20:35, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
