Saturday, August 29, 2015

I have these tapes, what are they for?

This post was originally a page on our parent site, MightyFrame.com

We are re-posting it here for historical purposes.

This is where our journey for yet another mysterious, archaic, vintage computer system began.

As of today, we believe that these tapes are OS Build and backups for a Microtech M1/34, which we are told is a re-branded POINT 4 MARK ? system, possibly a MARK V or MARK VIII, given the timeframes.

But, as our search continues, we will know more soon.

Original Post:

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A cacophony of 1982-1984 QIC tapes...all for one system?

Let's assume for the moment that all of these data tapes came from one system in one office.  Does anyone have any idea what system it might be?


Dates 1982-1984


IRIS OPERATING SYSTEM


http://archive.chibacityblues.org/ezines/LODHTJ/LODHTJ03.007

Iris Operating System - Computerworld - December 10, 1984


IRIS Migration Toolkit™ - uniBasic - Point 4 Data Corporation

Vintage-Computer Forum Thread on uniBasic?  

SGI IRIS 3130 (thanks NeXT from vintage-computer.com forum)

Computerworld Dec 10, 1984
"..to tie into Point 4's multiuser Iris operating system."


So, Iris belongs to Point 4?


DART UTILITY


KENNEDY DISC DRIVE / 
KENNEDY BACKUP DISC UTILITY
The date on the tape is 9/27/82

"Kennedy made tape drives"






Update 2016: It turns out that THIS Model 6450 was the tape drive that wrote half of these tapes, including the one that was labeled "Kennedy".


I ruled these out:







STARWRITER




TEC STARWRITER MODELS 40 AND 55

CBM 6400: C.Itoh Starwriter F10-40

Logical Units & Positions
"LU" and a preformatted ( DC600HC) cartridge sounds more like something from an HP1000




Streaming Tape Systems 
Backup a Winchester 

MICROTECH Business Systems 
introduced a high-performance family of 
DART-based minicomputers, all built 
around Winchester disk drives and all 
featuring the flexibility of streaming 
tape backup. 

The DART familyavailable in 
seven basic configurations—includes a 
high-speed, 16-bit minicomputer and 
64Kbytes of RAM memory on a single 
board. All models support a variety of 
hard disks, from 10Mbytes on a single 
spindle to as much as 732Mbytes on four 
spindles. 

The DART-based systems run the 
IRIS operating system and a wide 
variety of existing applications 
packages. 

Software currently available from 
MICROTECH includes everthing from 
word processing (TIPIST) and account- 
ing packages to a variety of medical, 
dental, legal and architectural pro- 
grams. 

The smallest computer, called the 
System 50, includes a CPU with 64K of 
memory; four serial I/O ports; a 20Mbyte 
Winchester disk drive with a 20Mbyte 
streaming tape backup drive and con- 
troller; a 27 -inch cabinet; and the IRIS 
operating system. Available 
immediately, it lists at $14,950. Optional 
printers and CRTS also are offered. 

At the top of the line, the System 
400 includes a POINT 4 computer with 
64K of memory and battery backup; a 
158Mbyte Winchester disk and 
microstreamer tape backup; a controller; 
four serial I/O ports and the Mighty 
MUX multiplexor; a 27 : inch cabinet; and 
the IRIS operating system. Also availa- 
ble immediately, it lists at $36,000. 

For further information contact: 
Bill Gallucci, Microtech Business 
Systems, 3180 Pullman Street, Costa 
Mesa, CA 92626 (714) 557-8640.


Follow the conversations at:




"In fact, the Mark VIII is aimed to compete with low-end Data General Corp. Eclipse processors, whereas the Mark V and Mark III are targeted against DG's Nova 4..."  http://bit.ly/1flr4WV




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