MAI 4101/310-01240

[BlaBla1985]

The doubled o's and a's are dead giveaway. Could also be Flemish or possibly Afrikaans.

Just curious; what are you going to do with this thing?

Haha... that is an excellent question... I don't know yet. Part of me was not expecting the system to just "boot up" at some point, especially the hard disk (which seems to be fairly important to the overall achitecture of the computer).

The main thing for me was that I really wanted to own a minicomputer at point, and they are not really readily available here in The Netherlands. Sure, if you would search long enough you could buy one in some way. But to just find one... in a buildings top floor somewhere tucked away. It's like finding an old car in the back of barn underneath a pile of straw and hay.
On top of that, the building it came from used to be in a very good location back in the day for business... but with some changes in the road network surrounding the building it's owners would more likely want to sell it or demolish it and sell the ground for future building projects like housing or whatever.
This machine would likely have been scrapped at that point as no one really knew what to do with it... probably the keyboard for the terminal would get nicked along the way and the rest of the machine would be useless.

For me, it's just part of my collection. A curiosity to show to people who never interacted with machines like this (which includes myself btw, the entire setup is older then me).

At that point I should ask myself: "What AM I doing with all these things in my collection." And the answer overall is... to have some fun with it, to learn something about it, explore what it can (and more then often can't) do. In this case, explore the hard disk (not really any personal files but the programs used) and explore the Business Basic on the Terminal 0.
And if any of that can be archived without using the Tapedrive (which I don't have, it was lost to time), I would be interested in doing that. As much of MAI stuff seems to be still lost to time or unknown.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Well, congratulations on getting that beast talking again! I keep getting Basic Four confused with Four Phase Systems.

 

[BlaBla1985]

Well, congratulations on getting that beast talking again! I keep getting Basic Four confused with Four Phase Systems.

Thanks, I don't think I have ever seen a Four Phase System. (Then again... I had never seen a MAI before this one).

I don't have anymore dumbterminals, but I have a bunch of old luggable PC compatibles. For some reason, any VT emulation turn the screen to this.
(This is in Procomm)

But if the emulation is set to Televideo 910/920 emulation it does work normally.
(again, in Procomm)


I wanted to try and hook up a modern laptop to the it... but I'm not sure what terminal emulator to use. I've tried Tera Term, but it only has various VT emulations. PuTTY seems to have the same "problem". Are there emulators out there that can (for example) do Televideo 910 (because I know that works well)?

I tried to tweak the screen size so it would wrap around nice but it just screws it up a bit. Otherwise it looks the same as the first Olivetti picture.

 

[m_thompson]

If you ever visit the USA the Rhode Island Computer Museum has three MAI systems that have not been powered on in more than 20 years.

 

[BlaBla1985]

If you ever visit the USA the Rhode Island Computer Museum has three MAI systems that have not been powered on in more than 20 years.

Haha, I'll keep that in mind, although I'm not going to claim that I'm a expert on MAI systems now. It was mostly swapping some dead capacitors, crossing fingers and hoping for the best. I think mine was this well preserved because it was stored in an airconditioned room (this was likely the room it was originally installed in) that now served as a room for telecom equipment.

But, if one of them is a 310, I would be interested in any documentation. While the System 200-410 service manual has a lot in common with the 310, the processor is somewhat different. There should be a memory test program called ":MEM 16" but it's not on my system (while ":CPU" is there).

 

[m_thompson]

MAI Basic/Four Model 1200

MAI Basic/Four Model 1200

www.ricomputermuseum.org

MAI Basic Four Model 4102

This cabinet says that it is a model 4102, which the documentation says is a SM-REMOVABLE DISK SYS CCA, but it actually contains a CPU. We are not sure what model it is.

www.ricomputermuseum.org

MAI Basic/Four Model 8000

MAI Basic/Four Model 8000 This Basic/Four 8000, manufactured by MAI of Irvine, California was the primary system for Soluol Chemical Company, West Warwick, Rhode Island from its installation in 1975 through at least two major upgrades. When it was finally retired in 1997 it was believed to be the

www.ricomputermuseum.org

 

[BlaBla1985]

The computer is back together again, I had to fix some corrosion on 1 of the side panels. While it looks good enough for my purposes it's far from factory perfect.





The MAI branded terminal has some extra functions to it compared to a regular terminal (like the Televideo 910). In the top bar it shows which workstation it is (in my case T2 to T7) and a real time clock. Indicators for Caps Lock and various modes are also displayed in that top bar (like Block and Freeze Modes).



I get the feeling that R.S.B. is not the name of the software, but rather the name or initials of the company that used this computer. The software used would then be called "FAST PAKKET".

Also, the hard disk is a bit of a grumpy old git I think... it doesn't always want to load the heads, as if the mechanism is having a hard time doing the initial push. It usually works after a try or 2 but I get some Connor melted rubber sticky bits vibes from it.

Still, I'm quite happy with the result... now I need to make some space in a corner of my "office" to house it in a nice spot.
I may need to make a small modification to the service switch that turns off both the mains voltage and the battery back up. It's in the rear of the machine pretty hard to reach now that it's together again. I think I'll mount and extra switch behind the front door underneath the hard disk. It can be done without damaging anything and is easy to change back to original if ever needed.

 

[BlaBla1985]

I was going to buy on of these second hand on Ebay or something... but they still make them new. Wasn't aware of that. There was a 4 way switch with 9 pin connectors but is was out of stock for now.



This means it's much easier to use the machine with just 1 terminal. Put the output T-0 on A and T-2 on B. And some velcro to stick it to the the top of the computer.

 

[VERAULT]

Csn you explain this mod a bit more and why you did it?

 

[BlaBla1985]

Csn you explain this mod a bit more and why you did it?

Sure, it's really a mod (at least, I don't really see it like that).

In my system there are 2 cards for serial output, each card has 8 outputs for RS-232. On the first card, the first output is Terminal 0 for the system and is (for as far as I can see) used as the system admin terminal. Only this output boots into the Basic on my system. As it boots up, it will run some sort of autostart program that launches the office software package. This software is only run on outputs 2 through 7 on the first serial card. Called Terminal 2 through Terminal 7.

All this "mod" does is that the switch box takes in 2 outputs from the serial card (Terminal 0 on switch A and Terminal 2 on switch B) and connects to the one MAI terminal.
During startup, it's switched to A (T-0) to see the system starting, setting date and time, make sure everything is running and it starts Business Basic (it shows a ready prompt like most Basic).
Once it's running it can be switched to B (T-2) to explore the office software.
The MAI terminal has some special functions that are not present on my other dumb terminal or in the PC terminal emulators. I also only need to set up 1 terminal to play around with both the Basic and the Office software.
The other way of doing this is to unplug the cable from T-0 after the computer has started and plug the cable from T-2 in the terminal... but this is more convienent.

This switchbox was normally used to switch between 2 computers and, for example, 1 printer. Or 2 printers on 1 computer.

I have 3 more serial connections connected to outputs T-3, T-4 and T-5, so I can connect other terminals or PCs.

The other serial card in my system was not used for terminals it seems, but I think there were other thing connected (there are hints that a Telex machine was connected somewhere).

 

[BlaBla1985]

I did do a proper mod to the system, a second service switch. It's in series with the service switch in the back.
The Service Switch was normally only used to make sure that no power was going into the back plane (including the backup battery). Otherwise this switch was not opperated.
It's located at the back inside the cabinet in the PDU, very hard to reach. I'd like to fully power down the machine whenever I'm not using it (there is no real reason to keep ram alive for my purpose). So I put a second switch in series underneath the hard disk behind the front door.



Also, the system has moved into my computer room (or what I like to call the "Office"). Took a bit of moving stuff around to get this beast into the spot I wanted... but it worked out well.