Abandoned Prime looking for new home (UK)

[James]

Hi all, this is probably the shortest time I've owned a machine. Bought 
just a few months ago as a "project" I now have it to offer again. I 
simply don't have the skill to get this running. I've also got too many 
other projects  :)

It's ex Salford Uni Prime 2550. Comes with 2 disk drives, 1 tape drive, 
3 boxes of manuals, 2 boxes of tapes, 4 5.25" floppy drives and a bunch 
of terminal lines.

Pictures (including all the manual covers) are here 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17208732@N00/

Located in Southampton near M27 J7. It's yours for the taking. I'd like 
it to go to a genuine collector but will consider any and all interest! 
I can hang on to it for a few weeks but it's just taking up valuable 
space right now. If there's no interest in the entire system then I may 
part out boards, manuals, etc.

As I understand it when I bought this it had sat for a year unused. 
Previous to that it had sat for a few years in a garage and been used 
occasionally and prior to that had been in the hands of the chap who 
rescued it from Salford. When I received it I had problems getting 
anything sensible on the terminal then things went downhill and I 
discovered the main 5V PSU had failed.
I tried replacing that with an external 200A unit borrowed from my Cray 
EL but hadn't considered how many other signals are generated by the 
power supply.  (MAN070 is available on bitsavers but this only covers 
the older Prime models - the power supply signals look the same but the 
VCP is very different). The ± 12 and +16 are all OK. I tried faking some 
of the power good signals and checked others (50Hz clock, etc). I even 
found one signal had broken on the backplane and have repaired that. 
Unfortunately without the manual for this specific model I'm stuck. In 
it's current condition it just sits with all front panel lights on and 
nothing on the console.

CPU:
As I say, the 5V supply has failed. I've patched several lines (the 
power good signals) inside the supply. I've had all the boards out, 
cleaned the connectors and vacumed the boards and case. I can include an 
80A 5V supply if it's of any use to you (I'd hope 80A is sufficient. The 
200A unit I was using is now back with the Cray!!)

Disk drives:
I found that the bolts holding the disk units in the casings were 
missing (a bag of "spares" was supplied which included the bolts and 
rubber mountings). I replaced the bolts before powering up, thankfully!
One of the disk units powers up and spins. The other doesn't power at 
all. I removed all the dust too whilst the drives were out.

Tape drive:
Powers up and front panel buttons seem to "do stuff" but can't test any 
further.

Tapes:
These are all externally clean but a lot of the casings have cracked. 
You'll need some experience with 9 tracks to read these I expect.

Documentation:
There's a lot of very tidy manuals and also quite a few loose manuals in 
ring binders. There's also about 10 pocket guides. What is nice is the 
collection of history - there's administrator logs, service requests, etc.

Floppy drives:
I'm told the two original Prime badged units have failed. There's a 
couple of more modern replacements (and a handful of floppies) included 
- one of these should work!

Without a working system I obviously can't test anything. Therefore, you 
should consider this as a source of spares or possible repair if you 
have the skill and/or manuals. I'm around most weekends for collection 
and can obviously give a hand loading. A standard SWB Transit does the 
job nicely.

So come on, give the Prime a new home. Please :)

James