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Mid Atlantic Rolm - Data General NOVA collection for sale

Covers: New York, Pensylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC.
Q

Qbus

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Feb 23, 2011
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Location
Salisbury Maryland
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Thinking of selling my Rolm 1602 collection, the Rolm 1602 is a military version of the Data General NOVA and uses all the same software and has all the same instruction set as the NOVA. The difference is that the Rolm is about a thousand times more rugged then the NOVA. I have two of them, both fully working with one in a standing roll around rack that also includes the paper tape reader and serial interface with the NOVA bedug loaded in core along with the paper tape loader and a second stand alone system that is in a rack mount case with the face attached. I have tons of documentation including full set of printed manuals, diagnostic programs on paper tape, card extracting tool, lots of assorted spares and cables and the like. There is also military test set that comes along with this and I would throw in things like a paper tape punch or other stuff that would be useful.

Due to the fact that this is a large collection cannot ship. It would require a couple pallets at least. Can maybe deliver within couple hundred miles at an additional cost but there is also an advantage to showing up hear so I can show you several things about how it works and you can also collect up a bunch of other stuff that I will throw in.

It’s a lot of money but you will be getting a lot of value. Thinking of $3,000.00 but open to offers.

Video of the system:

 

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16-bit 4 accumulator same as the Nova, SuperNova, 1200 and 800 The Loral 1602 system has a boot ROM loader and in some ways is a lot like a Nova 2

Although they use the same instruction set and the same port addresses the hardware is designed for harsh environments and is completely different from the Data General stuff. They were used in aircraft and also things like cruse missiles. A coupe common uses were things like identifying threatening signals and counter jamming and have seen both regular Data General Nova and these systems used in ground radar for reading IFF transponder signals and displaying that information on radar screens.

Of the two systems I have the Loral 1602 was built in the nineties and has 64k of core ram and the Rolm was built in the seventies and I think has 16 k of core. The fun part of core is that you can load a program and it stays in core until replaced so in some ways its like having an SSD!
 
Qbus said:
16-bit 4 accumulator same as the Nova, SuperNova, 1200 and 800 The Loral 1602 system has a boot ROM loader and in some ways is a lot like a Nova 2
Click to expand...

So no stack support (introduced in the Nova 3)?

I've recently been working from the "other end" of the Nova-class processors that are non-DG, namely an embedded system based on the Fairchild F9445 ("MicroFLAME") VLSI implementation. It's an embedded CNC 4-axis mill controller and there's nothing about the implementation that is DG-like other than the form-factor for the boards and matching connectors. Beyond the Fairchild data sheets you're on your own. Still, there's a lot to like about the implementation since in addition to stack support it includes 64K-word (twice "normal"; not limited to a 15-bit address) onboard low-power SRAM and did at one time employ a F9447 to generate an on-board DG-conformant I/O bus. The F9445 is pretty nifty as, among other characteristics (floating point multiply/divide/scale/normalize for 1/2/4-byte data), despite being limited by a 40-pin package, provides full front-panel support which for all practical purposes feels like a Nova 3 front panel (although this particular implementation does it through a bidirectional 9-signal interface between the CPU and front panel; plenty unusual, IMO). The boot ROM supports both a PTR and FDD, which one being determined by front-panel switch settings. Lacking documentation of any sort (no schematics!) it's slow going to reverse-engineer functionality and bus interfaces. The boot ROM is on a second board so in practice this is a two-board CPU implementation (although I haven't even guessed what most of the second board is doing; the first board fortunately does include a nice serial interface whcih goes unused ...). Eventually I'd like to get a Forth implementation running on it.
 
over the ten or fifteen years that I have been doing this stuff have found lots of documentation on the Nova family of products, have all the schematics, manuals and tons of documentation. Had a big collection of PDP-11 stuff that I sold off a couple years back. The DEC stuff had more available software but the hardware was getting stupid expensive and somehow all this stuff takes up tons of floor space! All of this is about having systems that are bare bone basic and operating systems in machine language and doing that sort of stuff. Just not smart enough to do the same thing with all this new generation of micro systems, just barley learning how to master the Basic Stamp at this point!
The 1666 that's getting thrown in is a Nova 4 but never did anything with that. The 1602 base Nova is a AN/UYK-19 and the 1666 is a AN/UYK-64
 
Would really like the opportunity to buy a 1642 CPI card for the 1635 control panel head that I already have !If you, or your buyer, has a spare one....
Would have bought the whole lot if it was not on the 'other side'..
 
The collection is gone! In the past five or six years I have sold off my PDP-11 collection and now my Rolm Data General stuff. Still have a big collection of Grid laptops and tablets and that may be next.
 
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