The UNIVAC 9000 series (9200, 9300, 9400, 9700) is a discontinued line of computers introduced by
Sperry Rand
Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the 20th century. Sperry ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroug ...
in the mid-1960s to compete with the low end of the
IBM System/360 series. The 9200 and 9300 (which differ only in CPU speed) implement the same restricted 16-bit subset of the System/360 instruction set as the IBM
360/20,
while the UNIVAC 9400 implements a subset of the full 32-bit System/360 instruction set. The 9400 was roughly equivalent to the IBM 360/30.
In 1972, UNIVAC stopped development of its 9000 series systems, in favor of hardware acquired from
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
, now called
UNIVAC Series 90
The Univac 90/60 system front panel
The Univac Series 90 is an obsolete family of mainframe class computer systems from UNIVAC first introduced in 1973. The low end family members included the 90/25, 90/30 and 90/40 that ran the OS/3 operating s ...
.
Hardware
The 9000 series uses monolithic
integrated circuits for logic
and
plated-wire memory;
the latter functions somewhat like
core memory
Core or cores may refer to:
Science and technology
* Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages
* Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding
* Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber
* Core, the centra ...
but uses a non-destructive read. Since the 9000 series was intended as direct competitors to IBM, they use 80-column cards and
EBCDIC
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC; ) is an eight- bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems. It descended from the code used with punched cards and the corresponding ...
character encoding.
The UNIVAC 9200 was marketed as a functional replacement for the
1004
Year 1004 ( MIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* Battle of Skopje: Emperor Basil II defeats the Bulgarian forces near Skopje (mode ...
and as a direct competitor to the IBM 360/20. The printer-processor is one cabinet, the power supply and memory another and the card reader and optional card punch make an 'L' shaped configuration. Memory is 8
KB expandable to 32 KB.
[ The 9200 II and 9300 II models, introduced in 1969, are extensions of the original 9200 and 9300 systems.]printer
Printer may refer to:
Technology
* Printer (publishing), a person or a company
* Printer (computing), a hardware device
* Optical printer for motion picture films
People
* Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist
* James ...
differs from earlier UNIVAC printers, being similar to IBM's "bar printer" of the same era. It uses an oscillating-type bar instead of the drums that had been used until this point, and runs at speeds up to 300 lines per minute.
As Sperry moved into the 1970s, they expanded the 9000 family with the introduction of the 9700 system in 1971. The 9700 was said to be three to five as powerful as the 9400, twice as powerful as the IBM System/360 Model 50
The IBM System/360 Model 50 is a member of the IBM System/360 family of computers. The Model 50 was announced in April 1964 with the other initial models of the family, and first shipped in August 1965 to the Bank of America.
Models
There are f ...
, and less costly than the IBM System/370 Model 145.
Software
The 9200 and 9300 run the ''Minimum Operating System''. The 9400 and 9480 run a real memory operating system called OS/4.OS/7
OS/7 is a discontinued operating system from Sperry Univac for its 90/60 and 90/70 computer systems. The system was first announced in November 1971 for Univac's 9700 system and was originally scheduled for delivery in March 1973. However, the de ...
was under development, but was discontinued in 1975.
References
External links
Operational Univac 9400
in the German computer history museum ''technikum29''
UNIVAC mainframe computers
16-bit computers
32-bit computers
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