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The Unisys Icon: One Canadian Xennial's Memories of Ontario's Obscure Computer

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Re: The Unisys Icon: One Canadian Xennial's Memories of Ontario's Obscure Computer

#11

Post by univacky »

Farfignoggen wrote: post #10

Well I've seen and programmed on Burroughs Corporation Mainframes(IBM Mainframes as well) and have seen an actual Sperry Corporation Univac Mainframe Drum Storage system(Ginormous beast) in actual use! And has anyone here actually played Space Invaders(ASCII Characters used) on a Burroughs TD830 CRT monitor! And modern day Unisys is the merger of those 2 mainframe makers some time ago! But none here are maybe from th…

I was there as well. I punched the cards and read the core dumps and programmed in machine language using the front panel switches and lights. I programmed the Burroughs machine in Algol, and the IBM in assembly language (BALR, USING); the GCOS operating system which gave the GCOS field in the Unix/Linux /etc/passwd file its purpose and name; and the Univac 494 with the FASTRAND II drums. It was the most fearsome computing equipment I've ever encountered thanks to its spinning tonnage.

You are seen.

Re: The Unisys Icon: One Canadian Xennial's Memories of Ontario's Obscure Computer

#12

Post by jasoneckert »

The picture in this blog is the later version of the ICON, but it ran the same QNX OS, programs, and games, and used the same LEXICON file server for it all.

In case anyone is interested in more information about the earlier version of the ICON (and the LEXICON file server it ran from), here are my two blogs posts:

https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/icon-computer/

https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/lexicon-computer/

One interesting QNX command we used to get in trouble in high school was apb (all points bulletin) - here's a demo of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr8ts6zV2DU

Re: The Unisys Icon: One Canadian Xennial's Memories of Ontario's Obscure Computer

#13

Post by TheCycoONE »

bfdm wrote: post #3
31337Logic wrote: post #2

I used these in grade school back when I lived in Ontario. Your write-up on these is detailed and brought back lots and lots of memories. Thank you!!

Ditto that. Hours and hours on these in the 1990s. Mostly Mathville and Offshore Fishing, of course.

A day in the life or Crosscountry Canada for the edgyness. Robot R&D for fun but I don't remember actually trying to pass the tests in it.

A lot of hours with a mostly absent gr. 5 teacher.

Re: The Unisys Icon: One Canadian Xennial's Memories of Ontario's Obscure Computer

#15

Post by n00b101 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #5

> Each Unisys ICON came with its own monitor and a very robust keyboard with a trackball embedded in it. The trackballs were robust indeed. Due to the client/server nature; a classroom of kids logging in at the same time could take several minutes and most of that time would be filled with a classroom of 7 year olds spinning the heck out of the tennis ball sized trackball. One more knowledgeable teacher once told us…

Consider yourself lucky.

My public high school in Ontario was supposed to be a "magnet school for the gifted" and instead turned out to be a scam.

The computer class teacher was absent for a year, and the substitute teacher insisted that the keyboard and mouse cords should be neatly arranged at the end of each class as if it was a knitting class. The "coursework" consisted of learning how to type out "business memos" using a word processor.

The school believed that this was an important skill and imagined that we would be writing "memos" on computers and printing them out in the "business world."

I skipped every class I could to hang out with my girlfriend and got out with a 2.0 GPA.

The school in question has since been demolished. The whole scam was to try to prevent the school from being demolished due to low performance, so they pretended to be a "magnet school for the gifted."

Re: The Unisys Icon: One Canadian Xennial's Memories of Ontario's Obscure Computer

#17

Post by vincent-manis »

Farfignoggen wrote: post #10

Well I've seen and programmed on Burroughs Corporation Mainframes(IBM Mainframes as well) and have seen an actual Sperry Corporation Univac Mainframe Drum Storage system(Ginormous beast) in actual use! And has anyone here actually played Space Invaders(ASCII Characters used) on a Burroughs TD830 CRT monitor! And modern day Unisys is the merger of those 2 mainframe makers some time ago! But none here are maybe from th…

In my OS course, in 1969, I wrote an IPL (bootstrap) program that copied cards to the printer, running in supervisor mode. It ran on a 360 virtual machine under the MTS time-sharing system. Before that, I wrote programs in assembly language for an IBM 7044, and I even was allowed to operate the 7044 on some graveyard shifts. I also wrote programs that ran on a CDC 3600, a Univac 1108, and a Honeywell 200.

But I liked the PDP-8 best.

So there!

Re: The Unisys Icon: One Canadian Xennial's Memories of Ontario's Obscure Computer

#18

Post by JSR_FDED »

Farfignoggen wrote: post #10

Well I've seen and programmed on Burroughs Corporation Mainframes(IBM Mainframes as well) and have seen an actual Sperry Corporation Univac Mainframe Drum Storage system(Ginormous beast) in actual use! And has anyone here actually played Space Invaders(ASCII Characters used) on a Burroughs TD830 CRT monitor! And modern day Unisys is the merger of those 2 mainframe makers some time ago! But none here are maybe from th…

Respect

Re: The Unisys Icon: One Canadian Xennial's Memories of Ontario's Obscure Computer

#19

Post by chipotle_coyote »

bitwize wrote: post #8

The 186 produced some obscure, kinda great, but ultimately doomed (due to not being PC compatible) systems in the early 80s. My favorites are the Tandy 2000 and the Mindset. This is one I haven't heard of. I'm also fascinated by the early Canadian personal computer scene. They were trying some innovative things in the great white North. Things like the mostly PC compatible Hyperion, which beat the Compaq Portable to…

The Tandy 2000 was the only 80186-based machine I'd known of until now. I actually had one for a while, bought from Radio Shack when they were quietly dumping the remaining stock for something like 90% off. It was like a computer from a slightly alternate timeline, one where MS-DOS's original notion of not being tied to PC-specific hardware (e.g., more like CP/M) actually took off.

Re: The Unisys Icon: One Canadian Xennial's Memories of Ontario's Obscure Computer

#20

Post by qingcharles »

bitwize wrote: post #8

The 186 produced some obscure, kinda great, but ultimately doomed (due to not being PC compatible) systems in the early 80s. My favorites are the Tandy 2000 and the Mindset. This is one I haven't heard of. I'm also fascinated by the early Canadian personal computer scene. They were trying some innovative things in the great white North. Things like the mostly PC compatible Hyperion, which beat the Compaq Portable to…

British schools were filled with these non-IBM compat, DOS compat 80186 PCs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RM_Nimbus

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