Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!sgi!wdl1!jeff From: jeff@wdl1.UUCP (Jonathan J. Jefferies) Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc Subject: Re: advise on personal unix system Message-ID: <4230002@wdl1.UUCP> Date: 20 Jun 88 22:46:31 GMT References: <1150@gmu90x.UUCP> Lines: 160 Dana This might not interest you at all but will send it out to you on the maybe. There have been several orphan types of unix boxes around. I currently use a callan and there has been at least one from AT&T itself that sold for $1,750. The main problem with these machines is that they are dated for their original purposes. Mine corresponds to an early 68000 based sun and runs System V version 4.2. But it does have all the trimings including a number of languages, assemblers, and the like. I'm not sure about the machine from AT&T - all I do know is that it was advertised in "Uni-Ops" books, Boonville, Ca (707) 895-2050. There are a series of tradeoffs I suppose we have to make between our intended uses and our pocket books. The callans have worn fairly well. My main problem has been disk drives (Micropolis 1304's) which in a couple of cases have gone well past their rated 40,000 hour mtbf. My machines were the larger versions that callan built but their are still a number of these out their available. I'm including some notes I sent out to some folks a while back just for curiousity's sake. It may be that this is not the right answer to your question or that I mis-understood you. Jeff Hi: Well this is something like paydirt, 2 responses in 1 day, perhaps I should send out messages more often on the net. A historical review of Callan computers with comments: In its short life Callan spurted out a series of computers- all with similar but different hardware & software. Probably this was and probably still is an undocumented feature of computer companies. But briefly callan put out at least some 4 versions of the hardware and at least two software versions and was working on a 5 th hardware system when they bit the dust. First of all, all of their hardware used the Multi-bus I for a system bus and then used some unused lines to define an internal cpu bus. Thus the cards are Multi-bus and standard Multi-bus cards (those that address 24 bits) can be used at least for i/o. In terms of hardware systems there was: 1. the terminal - you probably have one of in your system. It has many similarities to the vt-100 and is on a single card with screen and keyboard and was marketed as the Unistar 100 and later included as the terminal/workstation with the Unistar 200 series. 2. The Unistar 200, which came in two varieties: the PM68k cpu board model and the CD68k cpu board model. My machines all run with the latter. The main differences seem to be that the PM68k comes from Pacific Micro who is still in business and can fix your cpu board and even sell you an upgrade to the 68020 I believe. Or at least some addon board. The pm68k had some on board memory (256 -512k I believe) and may have had limitations as to how much it could address off board. The CD68k was Callan's own contribution to the confusion. The CD68k board differs in that it has no on-board memory. But it can address a magnificent 2 megabytes of memory, if you had the money. The later Unistar 200's also had larger disk drives, Micropolis 1304 which formatted to 43 megs. Both of the machines had 4 serial ports, one was for the Unistar-100 terminal interface, two were lead out the back of the machine, and one was left hanging - it had to have the same baud rate as one of the others. There were a variety of hardware boards available, including: a graphics interface card, floppy disk controllers, add. memory an smd hard disk controller, a combined floppy-streamer tape interface, several different serial controllers, an ST-506 disk controller, and probably some others. The internal cpu data path was 16 bits and made use of the multi-bus P-2 connector. The dynamic ram however was refreshed in all of the 200-machines by the cpu. The external multi- bus data path was either 8 or 16 bits. 3. Then the fourth hardware series (if you count the two versions of the Unistar 200 separately) was the Magnificient UNISTAR 300. Which was a Unistar 200 disguised as a mini-computer with no terminal built in but with expanded power supply, space for 4 (count them) micropolis 1304 drieves (4x43 megabytes), and a cypher streaming tape drive. I have had one of these given to me and I'm not sure whether it was a blessing or a curse. 4. And in the development stage but not yet ready for prime time was the CD68012 - (no there's no mistake I don't mean a 68020 but rather a motorolla 68012 processor ). Motorolla by the way is phasing (a polite term) this processor out. It is basically a 68010 processor with a few extra address lines led out to permit it to address 2 giga- bytes of ram. Of course Callan was going all out and upgrading its memory address space to 8 megabytes. A chap I know on the east coast sent me one for entertainment value. And there is a fellow in Palo Alto who has a number of the ram boards - minus the ram, the rising cost of 256k chips drove him to part with them- from the Callan auction. Speaking of social events the Callan auction was a great gathering of Callan connoisseurs. Actually I shouldn't complain as I am using mine for the same purpose that someone else proposed - education and enlightenment. On the software scene, Callan had come out with two versions of unix. Both of these were largely a product of Microsoft. The first which was ported to the PM68k board was system 7. The second was system V rev 4.2 for the CD68K series. It is this latter hunk of software that I am busily tearing into. I have been obtaining source code, disassembling the reconfiguration object modules and locating forgotten notes of obsolete lore to try and figure out what and why they (callan) did what they did. Talk about an archeological dig and it was only 1985 when they went belly up. But in 3 years you would be supprised at what happens to whale blubber. To be a little less flip about it the Callan's were probably as good as the rest of the market at the time and mine have worn relatively well. I used the Unistar 300 to teach an intro to unix class at DeAnza (a junior college in Sunnyvale) ( if you can actually imagine a college teaching computers without a computer) and after I left they kept the machine and left it run for a year. When I went to reclaim it there was sawdust inside from some construction work they had done and still the beast was running and I doubt that they turned it off except for christmas break. Now the old punch line some bad news and some good. You will probably find that the PM68K machines, software and hardware, are compatible with mine only with some difficulty, i.e. my object and task images will cause a core dump when run under system7. By the same token the disassemblies of the reconfiguration code is probably not directly applicable to sys 7, though you are welcome to it. However, in the course of my meanderings and at the Callan auction, I have run into a number of folks with the Callan PM68k machines. There is a good size group (6) at U.C. Santa Barbara. Unfortunately they aren't hackers and the machines have basically been shelved, the rodime drives are just adequate. I also know of one fellow who is also interested in upgrading his machine So I may be able to put you in touch with him. Now on the really helpful side I did lay my pinkies on some software which - both for the earlier system 7 (properly Unix System 3 version 7) and the later Unix System V. Much of the latter came with one or more of my machines. Also I have some copies of various hardware documents - which ain't always what one would need much less desire but do what we can with what we have. The question is what hardware do you have and which system are you running. I'm willing to share the software for the cost of reproducing and mailing. The documentation I'm willing to mail out (at your cost) and allow you to duplicate. It would be nice if we complete strangers could share these things. I would like to have a few others out there interested in these arcane objects. Anyway here is a summary of the software I have with comments: ** System 3 version 7 (or just system 7) Pascal compiler, Fortran 77, basic+, and unicalc (a spreadsheet). Also I have some documentation on the PM68k cpu board - which you may already have. ** System V Ada, fortran 77, 68k motorolla assembler (different than the unix one), cobol compiler, basic+, qone (a word processor), qcalc(spread sheet), callan graphics(useful if you have the callan graphics board which emulates a tektronix 4010), reconfiguration files (these are object modules which allow you to relink unix and thereby reduce the size or add in new drivers), unify (database )