Data General Nova, Eclipse, MV and AV

Data General Preservation and Restoration

Data General Nova, Eclipse, MV and AV

Data General Preservation and Restoration

Data General Nova, Eclipse, MV and AV

Data General Preservation and Restoration



Welcome

Welcome to my Data General Corporation (DGC) Preservation and Restoration site. The aim of this site is to preserve and restore systems that were designed and built by Data General Corp and whilst doing so provide as much information on those systems, peripherals, software and documentation as possible. If you are considering scrapping or sending anything Data General (DG) related for disposal to a salvage or recycling facility please consider sending it for preservation instead. You can contact me here if you have any Data General Systems, Peripherals, Displays, Documents, Manuals, Cables, Terminals, Parts, Spares, Floppys or Tapes you wish to dispose of.

Data General Systems were used across the world – Not only were they sold directly to end users by Data General themselves but they were also embedded into many industrial, military and commercial systems by OEM’s. I cut my electronics teeth using Data General systems (read more in about section) and I have very fond memories of these systems which is why I recently decided to buy and restore my first system which happens to be an MV/9800 – one of the last 15″ form machines made by Data General.

The site is very much work in progress so check back often to see how the projects are progressing.

Latest News
Data General Desktop Generation
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Data General Desktop

Another new project has landed today – a Data General Desktop.  Having had a quick look inside it appears to be a

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Data General AViiON AV5500
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DG AViiON AV5500

When I embarked on this hobby I made a pact with myself to stick to the ‘proprietary‘ Data General CPU’s e.g. the

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Data General microNova I/O Cable and Terminator
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DG microNova I/O

One thing that has genuinely surprised me is how much ex Data General people want to help with physical items for a

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Data General Field Engineering Password
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SCP FE Passwords

Both my MV/9800 and MV/9600 CPU’s have a Field Engineering (FE) SCP command which allow access to the Error Log for the

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crater en masse
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Crater en masse

I had a call a couple of days ago to say that the Data General 6220 5Mb Winchester Chassis was ready at the

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Data General Dasher Emulator
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Data General Dasher Emulator

I came across this Dasher emulator ‘DasherG’ which has been written by Stephen Merrony and is available on GitHub; https://github.com/SMerrony/DasherG  I have switched

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MPT/100 PSU
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Power Supply (PSU) Checks

An important part of any restoration project is thoroughly checking the power supply unit (PSU) of the equipment you intend to restore.

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Resistor Array
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Terminator?

Something that is new to me is the Data General Burst Multiplexor Channel (BMC) bus. When I used a Nova 3 and

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Recent Visitor Comments
Data General (DG) History

Data General Corporation (DGC) was founded by several engineers from Digital Equipment Corporation who were frustrated with DEC’s management and left to form their own company. The chief founders were Edson de Castro, Henry Burkhardt III, and Richard Sogge of Digital Equipment (DEC), and Herbert Richman of Fairchild Semiconductor. The company was founded in Hudson, Massachusetts in 1968.

Edson de Castro was the chief engineer in charge of the PDP-8, DEC’s line of inexpensive computers that created the minicomputer market. It was designed specifically to be used in laboratory equipment settings; as the technology improved, it was reduced in size to fit into a 19-inch rack. Many PDP-8s still operated decades later. De Castro, convinced he could do one better, began work on his new 16-bit design.The result was released in 1969 as the Nova.

To read more visit the Wikipedia page (where the above text was found). The Wikipedia page for Data General can be found here

de-Castro President Data General with DG MPT
Edson de Castro with DG MPT desktop in background

Data General Advertising: 

Data General Systems manufactured between 1969 and 1999: 

Nova, SuperNova, Nova 1200, Nova 800, Nova 840, Nova 2, Nova 3, microNOVA, Nova 4, Eclipse S140, Eclipse S100, Eclipse S200, Eclipse C300 Eclipse S230 Eclipse C330, Eclipse S130, Eclipse S250, Eclipse C350, Eclipse C150, Eclipse S130, Eclipse M600, Eclipse S/20 (microECLIPSE), Eclipse CS20, Eclipse CS40, Eclipse CS60, Eclipse S120, Eclipse S280, Eclipse C380, Eclipse DG500, Eclipse MV/8000 (Eagle), Eclipse MV/6000, Eclipse MV/4000, Eclipse MV/10000, Eclipse MV/2000, Eclipse MV/7500, Eclipse MV/2500, Eclipse MV/20000, Eclipse MV/7800, Eclipse MV/15000, Eclipse MV/40000, Eclipse MV/1000, Eclipse MV/1800, Eclipse MV/3000, Eclipse MV/5000, Eclipse MV/30000, Eclipse MV9600, Eclipse MV/60000, Eclipse MV9800, Clariion Disk subsystems and Motorola and Intel based Aviion systems before being sold to EMC in 1999.

These systems ran various operating systems, high level languages and applications including:
DOS, RTOS, RDOS, DTOS, DG/DOS, MP/OS, AOS, AOS/VS, AOS/VS II, MV/UX, DG/UX, XODIAC, TCP/IP, FORTRAN IV, FORTRAN V, FORTRAN 77, COBOL, INTERACTIVE COBOL, BUSINESS BASIC, EXTENDED BASIC, MP/BASIC, MP/PASCAL, SP/PASCAL, DG/L, RPG II, PL/I, DG/DBMS, DG/SQL and CEO.

datageneral.uk

This site was created to help preserve the history of Data General Systems by acquiring (thru salvage, gifting, purchasing or trading) and restoring those systems. In doing so we can hopefully create an informative reference for each item that we acquire for future reference, from complete systems, peripherals, PCB’s, spares all the way down to the cables used to connect items together.

We are based in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom and are able to advise of the best course of action should you have a Data General System or associated equipment or software that requires disposal. We can also advise on and provide data destruction on those systems whilst retaining (where possible) the physical hardware for preservation. We can also (where required) physically remove disk storage for destruction or provide data destruction certificates.  Please use the Contact page in the menu above or click HERE

This site (datageneral.uk) is unrelated to any entity who may have previously or currently owns any Data General Trademark or Copyright. The information on this site is made available for enthusiasts use only.