Data General Nova's in Their New Home
Added 2020-01-12 16:04:23 +0000 UTCI wanted to give you all an update on this because it has been taking up a ton of my time. I've finally finished getting the Data General systems set up again just as they were before I moved them and I'm now finally able to begin working on them. But I'm going to be going really slowly on this so I don't break anything. If you want to read some more about these systems in detail I made a post on VFCed about them here: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?73143-New-to-Minicomputers-with-Data-General-Nova-4-X-and-microNova-8561
At the bottom of that post I linked to some photo albums of different parts of the computers but I'll link those here as well for you to check out if you want.
Nova 4/X Cabinet: https://imgur.com/a/4gdhHxS
Nova 4/X Cards: https://imgur.com/a/v3BY5UB
microNova Cabinet: https://imgur.com/a/rgFruez
microNova Cards: https://imgur.com/a/4ZZSsiB
Dasher D2: https://imgur.com/a/ZPNGLKs
8 inch Floppy Disks: https://imgur.com/a/DDjMJFd
Nova 4/X Service Logs: https://imgur.com/a/cpmjoou
microNova Service Logs: https://imgur.com/a/FzTVzbr
These ate up a lot of space I was previously using for storage and finding new places for those things was a large part of why setup took so long. The filming area is now too crowded with big things and I'm going to have to rethink what I keep in there. So there is still a little bit of friction to getting work done at the moment.
But I have been able to do some filming for a video about the Data Generals and I'm going to begin working on that now. I'm not really sure what the scope of the video should be yet. Most people won't be very familiar with DG so I should likely go over who they are and why these matter. But I plan on doing a more detailed video about that when I have the computers working. So I don't want to repeat myself too much. I'm going to try to balance out the history and excitement with getting the computers and see how it goes.
I''m really looking forward to sharing the experience of working on and with these machines because they are so unlike anything else I have encountered. I hope that this isn't something monumentally boring for most people. I should probably work in some relating to home computers at the time, I may need to go do some more shooting for that...
Comments
I'm really passionate about these systems but it's an overwhelming amount of computer to get all at once. There is so much I could talk about that this could be a 3hr long video. Like I just realized I didn't ever acknowledge the terminal in what I have filmed which is probably the most relatable part. I am trying to get into the DG groups now so I should probably join those. Are they mailing lists or IRC? I'm not sure where to look for them.
Tech Tangents
2020-01-12 16:16:52 +0000 UTCDon't worry about making a boring video: If you're passionate about the material, it will come through. If you need additional help with the Data General, you may want to join the cctalk or cctech lists, as they have some of the guys who used to service them.
Jim Leonard
2020-01-12 16:07:44 +0000 UTC
