Mentor 2000/Pick - was: Buroughs L5000 available

[Jay West]

Dave wrote....
> Thanks for the info Jay, it seems fairly impressive - It's got 16 DB-9
> connectors (serial?) on the back - Is this a serious multi-user machine?
Pick is designed from the Virtual Assembler on up to be a multi-user RDBMS. 
It is a serious multiuser machine. Probably on all DB9's, but particularly I 
noticed on most Pick machines.... every vendor had a different pinout for 
the DB9 port. GA Zebra's did tx/rx/sgnd on 3/4/5!

> I have some documentation, but not all that much (and no media), can
> you suggest any resources - Probably won't get to it for a while (still
> working on the Unisys), but eventually I'll be hungry for details!
When you get ready let me know, I have quite a few manuals. There is also 
books on Pick at B.Dalton/Waldenbooks, at least their used to be! The best 
part if pick is dynamic arrays. A little odd at first, but once the light 
bulb goes off, you'll wonder why everyone didn't do it that way!

>> This is most likely a Pick machine.  it probably took a tape to boot
>> it.  It may be a Z 8000 type
>> machine, if it is Pick.  They were one of the first ones to try to use
>> the Z8000 in a system.
Most pick systems would boot up right from the hard drives, the tape was 
only needed to install a fresh system.

I don't recall if the Adds Mentor 2000 was a firmware implementation or a 
software implementation. I found the software implementations to be much 
more fascinating/fun.

Jay