> On Jan 17, 2017, at 2:50 PM, geneb <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 17 Jan 2017, Jon Elson wrote:
>
>> On 01/17/2017 11:09 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>>> I find it curious that what seems to be collected in the minicomputer
>>> area seems to be gear of major brands.
>>> Does anyone collect Varian minis?
>> I had a Varian 620F a long time ago. It was a whole bunch of wire-wrap
>> boards. It sort of tried to work, but was very flaky. I was able to store
>> some words into the core memory, but it seemed like every couple minutes it
>> would zero out a word or two (I guess it was failing to write back the
>> contents after the destructive readout.) Without schematics, it was
>> impossible to do much about it.
>
> I used to work on a 727 flight simulator that used a Varian 620 to generate
> the visuals. The display was capable of addressing 1024 points of light and
> that's how the runways and airport outline were drawn. Pretty neat stuff.
> Here's some pics of the system that ran the sim:
> http://flightweb.simpits.org/BehindTheScenes/727sim_page1.html
Nice.
I saw (but never used) a Varian 16 bit mini in college. Forgot the model
number; I used to have the handbook but it seems to have been lost. It was
used because of its microprogramming capabilities. The control panel was
unusual: lights and switches basically, but the switches were membrane
push-buttons. So the entire front panel was a smooth surface.
paul
