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Litton ABS MiniComputer - Any info out there?

K

Kevin Williams

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
73
Location
Fort Worth, TX
Hey Everyone,

I recently made a cool find in the form of a Litton ABS Model 1601 Processor. I found info online about machines in this series, and it seems to be a small office accounting style device. I also received a bunch of paper tape for it with programs like general ledger, etc. The only real site which talks at all about this machine is here: http://www.piercefuller.com/library/10023.html?id=10023 and it looks like the collection has been split up long ago. I know there were like 70 companies making minis around this time, but I was hoping someone out there may have a little bit of info or a schematic / pinout for the external connector. Unfortunately, I only have the CPU, and not the paper tape reader/punch or terminal. It's too bad, as I really think after some testing with the power supply, checking caps, and maybe oiling the memory drum bearings, I should be able to power this guy up!

If not, no worries, it's still a cool machine and I even have permission to hang on to it for awhile! Wife Approved!

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Thanks!
-Kevin
https://texelec.com
 
Thanks Chuck! Wow, I need to learn to dig better. I dug high and low looking for something like this. I'll post back here if I ever get a day or two to work on it. BTW, I'm going back to the place I got this next week to see if I can find other stuff. I'm pretty sure I saw the top of the tape reader there, but not sure what else could be hiding around. The place is full of old video games, video poker and MANY guano covered jukeboxes. Yes, the building is (was?) full of bats. It's in Mineral Wells, TX if anyone wants to check it out, let me know.
 
I'm a bit late to the discussion, I just registered on this site. I used to own a complete system as shown in RiccardoItaly picture. Unfortunately, when I migrated from Australia to America in 1985, I could not justify taking it with me. The heathen I donated it to, broke it up for parts. Very Sad. The manual that Chuck(G) refers to that is save at bitsavers is a scan of my manual, which I still have on my bookshelf. All of the pencil notes in the scan are in my crappy hand writing, for example PDF page 199. I wrote a program for the machine that read the paper tape (which was quite a fast reader), and resent it to an output device I designed. That output device was the papertape reader of my Intersil 6100 CMOS microprocessor based PDP-8E that I built. Don't believe me? Look at the notes on PDF page 36. So I used to own ABS/1241, I used to program it, I did service down to the component level, I found and corrected errors in the manual (Page 78, 91, ...), found states where it locked up (page 87). It's been 36 years since I last played with my 1241, but I still remember most of what the architecture was like, and the challenges of writing programs for it.
 
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Ciao Riccardo,
I was a technical engineer of Litton machines and I have manual and also spare parts.
Actually I am working for an IT museum (restoration, ecc.) and, if you want, I help you with support or exposition to the museum in Italy ....
best regards
Gabriele
 
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