Talk:Interdata 7/32 and 8/32

Use in Australian Department of Defence

I have no references at this time, so am noting this here for posterity. I will see if I can find references.

The Australian Department of Defence used 7/32, 8/32 and 3200 series systems, for Logistic and Manpower computing systems from the 1970's to late 1980's, although some survived into the 1990's in niche areas. The department, while using the OS/32 O/S for central development, has written its own Real-Time Operating System for production use, called Minex. Systems were distributed throughout Australia, RAAF Butterworth Malaysia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mimarx (talk • contribs) 01:37, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

what-when-how.com

@Snori: I think I jumped to the wrong conclusion regarding the what-when-how.com reference: it appears not to be a plagiarism. However, I asked over at WP:RSN and the consensus there seems to be that this website is not a reliable source because it lacks any kind of authorship info. We could cite the original Encyclopedia of Space Science and Technology if someone can verify that the text came from there (surely the abstract did, but I don't have access to the full article). QVVERTYVS (hm?) 07:58, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Model Numbers

This article uses model numbers (7/32 and 8/32) which were introduced after Perkins-Elmer purchased Interdata. For example, I worked on an earlier model named "Interdata Model 70" which is not listed here but is mentioned on the parent article. Neilrieck (talk) 12:05, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Merging Articles

I think a good case could be made for merging this article with Interdata to eliminate unnecessary duplication. Neilrieck (talk) 12:24, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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First 32-bit minicomputer

...or not, as the "dubious" tag states, with reference to the Norsk Nord-5; it also says to discuss it, but there seems to be no discussion here, nor on the Norsk Data talk page, nor the Nord-5 talk page (unless I just failed to see it, which is always possible). So here is a discussion, or at least a request for one. Personally I have no idea at all nor any vested interest either way, but I'd be interested to find out. I'm presuming the likes of the IBM S/3X0 of the time were all considered mainframes, even the little ones, and I seem to be too lacking in imagination today to think of any other contenders. --Vometia (talk) 12:59, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the chronology, but it was commented on at the time as being the first, e.g. by this guy and this article. Their ads, and this 1973 article, on the other hand, claimed "first 32-bit minicomputer under $10,000", which is probably what they're remembered for. Dicklyon (talk) 00:08, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

The terminology of mini or mini-computer, later super-mini to a degree was always marketing speak used by vendors to distinguish themselves from competitors which of course were foremost IBM at the upper end and mostly served to establish the own market niche. This self-classification to a degree was about physical size, a rough performance classification and cost. Eventually Cray introduced the [Cray EL90] which finally blurred the lines of these classes by being called a [supercomputer], a deskside system, a departmental supercomuter, mini-supercmputer as it did fit the narrative of the moment.

Ralf.Baechle (talk) 10:33, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

3200 series no longer produced?

The article states "... was sold to Concurrent Computer Corporation, who yet produce a vastly enhanced 3200-series of machines." I suspect this is no longer true. Concurrent Computer Corporation has changed hands a few times, and it now seems to be https://concurrent-rt.com/products/. The new Concurrent Real-Time doesn't seem to offer anything like the 3200 series - but does anyone know for sure? Riordanmr (talk) 17:04, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Riordanmr: Thanks.. This looks like a good catch. I'm 99.9...% certain that you are right. The supporting link for that claim (itself puffery with its "vastly enhanced" wording) is dead. If it really is still true (which I strongly doubt!) then a live, reliable source is needed. Meanwhile I have reworded it to the past tense. Feline Hymnic (talk) 20:43, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Riordanmr: FWIW, my school was using an Perkin-Elmer 7/32 for computer science classes by a time when other schools were happy to have Apple 2s or if they were posh, early PCs. I don't recall a sign on the machine but we used to call it a Perkin-Elmer. Unlike the image in the article our system was IBM-blue. Later we upgraded to a Perkin-Elmer 3205 which had a light grey case on wheels, might have been 19". It however had a Concurrent sign on the case.

We were running Edition 7 on both. Very early on the 7/32 was running OS/32, a real-time, multi-user, multi-tasking OS. While multi-user it did not provide any kind of security. Only the sysadmin aka operator had the ability to list directories. File security was keeping filenames secret and those 8+3 DOS-like afair. OS/32 wasn't truly multi-tasking, it was more an OS which running a process that was quickly switching the one active terminal the OS had quickly to create the illusion of an actual multi-user OS. One hostile miss-feature was that hitting the break key which was prominently located on every terminal would be considered by the OS to indicate "user is done with me, let's detach the terminal and stop serving it". You then had to walk to the operator and ask him to re-attach the terminal. You can imagine how this did work out at a school full of teenagers.

The 3205 still exists somewhere; I myself still have the (probably) entire OS/32 documentation, half the Edition 7 documentation and much of the hardware documentation for the 7/32 including a hard copy of the source code of the microcode of the CPU. The 7/32 CPU was a stack of like 30cm of very large PCBs loosely filled with mostly 7400 series TTLs. The 3205's CPU board was more compact. The board itself was manufactured in a technology I've never seen elsewhere. It looked like a robot had been used to put very thin wires at 90° angles. Many layers of that, embedded in resin. I need to sift through that to see if there's anything suitable for publication on Bitsavers or Wikipedia. Sadly I don't have pictures of the systems, especially not the 7/32 in blue and not that eye-insulting Vogon yellow.

One interesting difference our 7/32 had was a little hole in the front panel near the display and keys. Behind that panel there was a toggle which had to be used in the by today's standards unbelievably obscure and arcane boot procedure required to get the system to the boot prompt of the Edition 7 boot loader BOOT 1K. From that point on it was not to bad.

Ralf.Baechle (talk) 10:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)