road trip score: AViiON, Microdata 1600

[Charlie Carothers]

On 11/22/2010 6:03 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
>
> Yesterday my girlfriend and I returned from a hastily-scheduled road
> trip to Maryland; we went to see a friend who is gravely ill. While we
> were in town, we took the opportunity to visit a few other people.
> Another friend up there is preparing to move, and he dropped a few
> things in my lap since I was there with a mostly-empty car.
>
> The first was a Data General Aviion AV300 workstation. This is one of
> the few machines built around the Motorola 88K CPU. It came with its
> original keyboard, mouse, monitor, and a full set of DG-UX manuals. I
> don't yet know if it's functional, but according to my friend it was
> running a few years ago.
>
> The second is something I'm REALLY excited about. We went to his garage
> and he pointed me at two dusty card-cages full of boards, and told me
> that he picked them up from a college loading dock twenty years ago, and
> that he had no idea of what they were, but there were core memory boards
> in them. Oh, and there's this lights-and-switches front panel that goes
> with them. (!)
>
> Upon getting them home and digging around, it appears to be a nearly
> complete Microdata 1600 CPU. I have the two backplanes with card cages
> and boards, and the front panel, along with some cables. I lack the
> power supply, but I can build one of those...with that, I think I have
> enough to resurrect the basic CPU.
>
> Neat stuff!
>
> -Dave
>
I'll be really interested to see how the 1600 restoration goes.  Some 
pictures would be nifty - hint, hint.  :-)  I keep thinking I'll dig the 
820 I have out of the garage some day...  I never worked with a 1600, 
but I sort of assume it is in at least some ways a descendant of the 800 
series.
Later,
Charlie C.