This 7 slot Nova 1200 has arrived from California. It needs a lot of restoration work on the front panel and I also need to acquire a Nova 1200 CPU card and perhaps some additional memory (judging on the shape of the 4k core card in it!).
This example has R&D stencilled in red on its hood and an asset badge attached to the chassis labelled ‘Computer Operations Inc’. Perhaps this Nova was used in the development of their Tape System (based on the LINC Tape) and sold with interfaces for many different minis’ in the 70’s including the DG Nova?
I have managed to acquire a complete set of replacement switches for the 1200 front panel and in addition found a company here in the UK that can (hopefully) create a new overlay for it as well.
So I have stripped down the Front Panel……
The polycarbonate plate through which the switches protude measures 475mm across, 72mm high and 3mm deep and has a semi-translucent covering on the rear to difuse the light from each lamp. The front of the plate has a polished surface on which a semi-translucent overlay is attached, it is this overlay that has perished on my example.
…………………more to follow
3 thoughts on “Nova 1200”
Oh. this brings back so many memories. I was involved in a computer aided draughting system called SUE which was designed by my father and named after the chief programmer (all in assembler) Sue Willetts, funded by SRC (Science Research Council) in the late 70s, early 80s.
In the end it wasn’t very successful, but we did sell one system to a carpet firm in London (they were the sort of people who carpeted Terminal 5 at Heathrow), based on a 4/c with a Tektronic 4010 terminal and a Benson plotter.
Ah, forgot to say that we ran on a Nova 1220 and I still remember the boot sequence that needed keying in on the front panel (376/Examine/060133/Deposit Next/377/Deposit/376/Examine/Reset/Start) to load in RDOS from the 2.5MB cartridge disk on device 33.
I’m currently involved in re-learning how to program in assembler using the simh Nova simulator, and amazed to find I remember some of the EDIT/NSPEED commands (mainly muscle memory).
When we finished with Nova after my father died I shipped a lot of manuals and stuff to WildHare, but am ashamed to say that since I didn’t have any storage space and the accountants who were storing my stuff needed extra room, that a 1220, a 4/C, and an ASR-33 went to the tip (probably about 15-20 years ago)
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If this interesting for You, please contact me.
Today I’m a long time retired and it should be a shame, if all this thing go to the dump, if I should leaving my live.
In my garage I have a nearly complete Nova 1200 (sorry, for the moment without the Basic I/O) a Dasher Terminal (sorry the display was falling down, so the plastic-case is broken, but can be repaired with som glue) + a keyboard, a lot of documentation for Nova 1200, Nova 2 and more, and what could be verry interesting a complete set of microfiches for different equipment of DG-computers. This was given to me from DG-Center as DG closed there business. Also SCSI brand new disk drive (I believe about 500MB), one extender board, a new disk head for a diablo 30 drive and some repair tools I’ve used. Maybe You can figure out more, if I scan send to You fotos via e-mail.
Pretty sure, I still could repair on component level a lot of DG equipment up to Nova 4 or S140, DG and Pertec tape drives and more.
In my stock is also a certain amount of IC’s which today are not so easy more to find.
Sorry for my not so excellent english
but with kind regards