The name sounds familiar ... not sure why ... it turns out they had their main offices here in Ann Arbor, MI at some point, as an aside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applicon Best, Sean On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 5:02 PM, Holm Tiffe <[email protected]> wrote: > In the nineties I've workes as electronican and system administrator at the > institue of geophyics at our local University of Mining and Technology here > in Freiberg Germany. > Some day I've got a call from Motorola in Munich, they wanted to get rid of > some old computers and asked if we had some use for them, I've sayed yes. > > As far as I know we got 3 Computers, one was an 68000 Unix system from > philips, some kind of Microcomputer development system for 8080 or 8085, > I've got the system running but since there wasn't much software on the > disk we had not much use for this thing. The disk was alsready dying and > lived not that long. > The next thing was a desktop VME System from Motorola, IMHO equipped with > an 68010, some MMUs, an color Monitor ad Harddisk and Floppy.. it run some > kind of VDOS (or so) .. or VME-DOS or soemthing.., I remember that we had > some > documentiation for it and I've reinstalled that VDOS.. but not much use for > that thing also. > > The 3rd Computer was the most interestng one. That thing was labeled > "Applikon Workstation" (as far as I remember, may be Applicon..). > That was some kind of a microvax made by Schlumberger. > It had an CPU that sat in a QBUS Backplane and a QBUS to UNIBUS Bridge. > The CPU was only a double sized board (!), an Emulex UC07 conected the disk > to the machine and so far as I remember there was some kind of graphics > board on the unibus side. I've repaired the CPU Board by changing the > RSA232 Drivers for the console and the beast came to live. I've fiddeled > around with the TK50 Tapes containing VMS4.6 (if my memory not fails) but > could'nt get warm with VMS... Installed NetBSD and failed. > NetBSD was'nt booting from the SCSI Drives with the Emulex, someone sent > me an UDA50 and I was able to install and boot NetBSD, but had to key in > the loader at the chevron every time I had to boot.. > I've sent the Emulex to Ragge for diagnostics and never got it back. > The Machine ran for years as ftp server at the institute until I've pulled > the plug. Have never seen a picture from that graphics board. > I've leaved the University in 1989, the machine sat on the garret of the > building to this time, I'm pretty sure it's long gone... > > > Now I'm fiddeling with VAXen again and that old thing came to mind, looked > with google but could'nt find a machine like this, not even a Microvax with > a only doubles sized CPU Board like an KDF-11. > > The question now is...is someone knowing of a beast like this? > > Regards, > > Holm > > -- > Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe, > Freiberger Straße 42, 09600 Oberschöna, USt-Id: DE253710583 > www.tsht.de, [email protected], Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741 > >
