ThisPostContainsComputers
Experienced Member
Hello,
Last weekend I went to an estate sale for an old Sperry-Univac employee. While I was there, I picked up, among other things, a Ferguson Big Board system. It has been stored in the corner of the garage for what looked to be the last 30 years, and was hooked into a Sperry-Univac brand 8-inch disk drive system. Obviously it is not in very good condition but it does seem to be complete. I also found another Big Board that was wrapped in newspaper in the bottom of a box. This one is in very good condition, but apart from a few resistors and sockets is completely unbuilt. I also received a keyboard that looks very similar to the ones used on the Sperry-Univac UTS-40 lines of computer, but I cannot find any information on the exact model. I am assuming it is some sort of ASCII keyboard to be plugged into the Big Boards, but I have no technical information for pinouts on the keyboard, and I did not get a cable to connect the two.
I am in the process of trying to get the fully assembled Big Board up and running. From the look of the original configuration, the board was powered directly from the 8-inch floppy drive, but I have that disconnected as the board and drives are very dirty and need cleaning. The board has some sort of solder flux all on the back of it, and while it does not seem to be damaging that board itself, I am still removing it. There is also a fair amount of grass and some sort of animal crap on the front of the board to clean off too.
So I have a couple questions about this system,
1: Is the keyboard connects just a straight through ribbon cable? And if so which way does it go, as I cannot find any schematics or pinouts for the keyboard, and the connector in unkeyed on the Big Board.
2: What type of CP/M does this thing run? Moreover I am looking for an image for CP/M that will boot on this thing. I read originally that these boards are SD, but mine has a daughter board where the disk controller IC used to be, so it may be DD.
Thank You
Last weekend I went to an estate sale for an old Sperry-Univac employee. While I was there, I picked up, among other things, a Ferguson Big Board system. It has been stored in the corner of the garage for what looked to be the last 30 years, and was hooked into a Sperry-Univac brand 8-inch disk drive system. Obviously it is not in very good condition but it does seem to be complete. I also found another Big Board that was wrapped in newspaper in the bottom of a box. This one is in very good condition, but apart from a few resistors and sockets is completely unbuilt. I also received a keyboard that looks very similar to the ones used on the Sperry-Univac UTS-40 lines of computer, but I cannot find any information on the exact model. I am assuming it is some sort of ASCII keyboard to be plugged into the Big Boards, but I have no technical information for pinouts on the keyboard, and I did not get a cable to connect the two.
I am in the process of trying to get the fully assembled Big Board up and running. From the look of the original configuration, the board was powered directly from the 8-inch floppy drive, but I have that disconnected as the board and drives are very dirty and need cleaning. The board has some sort of solder flux all on the back of it, and while it does not seem to be damaging that board itself, I am still removing it. There is also a fair amount of grass and some sort of animal crap on the front of the board to clean off too.
So I have a couple questions about this system,
1: Is the keyboard connects just a straight through ribbon cable? And if so which way does it go, as I cannot find any schematics or pinouts for the keyboard, and the connector in unkeyed on the Big Board.
2: What type of CP/M does this thing run? Moreover I am looking for an image for CP/M that will boot on this thing. I read originally that these boards are SD, but mine has a daughter board where the disk controller IC used to be, so it may be DD.
Thank You