Charles River Data System "Universe 68" System mini-mainframe system

[steven stengel]

Hi,
I'm trying to sell my neighbors old mini-mainframe system from the early 1980's.

The system is very clean, and was maintained regularly when in use in the 80's.
Let me know if you're interested, or have any recommendations.

-- Charles River Data System "Universe 68" System
-- Century Data System [AMS 571] storage drive 615MB HD
-- Cipher Cache Tape [M990] Tape Drive with tapes

-- 3 Wyse 50 monitors with keyboards
-- Cables, etc, and *all factory manuals*.

This systems has an 8-inch floppy, 615MB hard drive, and tape back-up.

Here's some PDFs from the internet:

http://www.1000bit.it/ad/bro/charles...temCompSys.pdf
http://www.1000bit.it/ad/bro/charles...m-Universe.pdf

Actual system pics available here:
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic1.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic2.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic3.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic4.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic5.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic6.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic7.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic8.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic9.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic10.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic11.jpg
http://oldcomputers.net/crds/pic12.jpg

 

[ClassicHasClass]

The PDF URLs are, uh, pre-shortened.

http://www.1000bit.it/ad/bro/charles/CharlesRiverSystem-Universe.pdf

 

[smplfyi]

I'd love to be proved wrong, but I did research on Charles River some years ago. It used to be advertised in the Electronics and Computer magazines in the 1980's. But in 201x I could never find any good information sources, particularly on the UNOS Operating System

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNOS_(operating_system)

So it remains a very rare machine to me, but equally then I propose one without any support!

You can of course go down the eBay route for sales, just stick to your guns re pricing! Presumably this machine retailed at well over 10K USD at time of purchase. Does it start and is all the software available etc. Usual stuff.

regards mb.

 

[g4ugm]

I suspect that the terminals and tape drive are more saleable, and so worth more, than the rest of the system, which would only have a niche market. It might be worth talking to CHM but even they have limited storage space. Have you tried posting on CCTALK ?

 

[Marty]

Hi All;

I have the same basic system, and I have wanted to sell mine but, I have not tried very hard..
Also, mine has a Floppy controller issue now, at present..
I have all of the manuals..
I had tried a few years ago to get into their Private Group, but to no avail, it seemed to be for Employees only of that defunct company..

THANK YOU Marty

 

[ard]

Hi All;

I have the same basic system, and I have wanted to sell mine but, I have not tried very hard..
Also, mine has a Floppy controller issue now, at present..
I have all of the manuals..
I had tried a few years ago to get into their Private Group, but to no avail, it seemed to be for Employees only of that defunct company..

THANK YOU Marty

anyone having software for documentation for the universe 68 ?
I'm looking for CRDS UNOS and hopefully the c compiler, linker, assember, ...

I have a working basic four system 2000 that used UNOS licensed from CRDS. I only have a minimal set of operating system files.
The version of UNOS could be from from around 1982, the header of the binary files shows: "Copyright 1982 Charles River Data Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved." and /etc/start contains "UNOS (C) 1981 BY CHARLES RIVER DATA SYSTEMS, INC"

Any documentation about on disk format, file formats, ... could be helpful as well.