In fact, I used this machine from 1988 to 1999 (the date of the
breakdown). This machine was given to me by my father who worked as a
programmer on a Sperry UNIVAC 90/30, among others. This UTS 40 has a
sentimental value because besides the paternal donation, it was my first
"serious" machine that evoked me the loved big mainframe and computer
terminals (In 1988 I was 15 years old and I had only an Amiga 500 and a
Commodore 64). I wanted to give it a usefulness and under CP/M I
programmed a soft in BASIC to manage a database which was a big
help-memory-reminder in which I noted all that passed by my mind, a lot
of funny stuff, dreams, projects, ... ;-)
My UTS was on every day and I used her constantly, this machine seemed
indestructible however after 20 years of good and loyal services it
began to show signs of fatigue. I had sometimes an error message during
the POC TEST at initialization (RAM or ROM error, I can not remember).
At this time I incriminated my brave cat who was watching me tapping on
the keyboard and sleeped regulary on the top of the screen that served
her as heater, thus blocking the normal ventilation of the machine.
One day I turned on my UTS and instead of the POC TEST, just a long
"BEEEP" and nothing on the screen. As I remembered the RAM / ROM issues
displayed via the POC TEST, I suspected the ROMs on the "program
cartridge". In fact I knew a lot less electronics compared to today.
Fortunately I had printed all of my writings with the manesmann-tally
dot matrix printer that was connected to the machine shortly before the
failure.
I think today that it is possible that the breakdown was simply due to a
deficient diet because of aging capacitors.
If today I put it on, there is no longer BEEEP, nothing. I always told
myself that I would refurbish it one day and that I would start with the
PSU. But there is the underlying fear of a more serious problem with
ROMs or RAM, or more vicious, with the numerous tantalum capacitors
associated with the RAM (already observed with my IBM XT).
The subsystem has long been functioning after the death of the terminal,
now there is a breakdown of power supply (bridge rectifier apparently),
and the belts are melted, but nothing serious a priori.
In short, I want to restore this machine :-)
It was a synchronous terminal but there was an RS-232, if I could repair
my brave machine and make it communicate with my other machines it would
be great :-)
In any case, that's why I've always been interested in finding spare
parts for this old buddy.
I had already tried to talk about that a long time ago on a forum, I
just found the link:
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?2470-UTS-40-FROM-SPERRY-UNIVAC&s=5e952b2dbc6c9ae28d49f800eacaf64e
And finally here, four images - Classified file ! - a video from 1989. I
was 16 and so happy to have fun with my dear UTS 40 ^_^
http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/1989.jpg
Will I ever resurrect him one day?
On 28/07/2017 08:52, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:
On 7/27/2017 10:31 PM, Dominique Carlier via cctalk wrote:
Oh, I have a Sperry Univac UTS 40 and its 8-inch floppy disk
subsystem. I love this machine but it's been down for 15 years now. I
suspect a simple PSU problem but it would be the opportunity to have
possible rare parts.
However I reside in Belgium. I sent a mail to the seller to know his
price for a shipment.
A photo of my dear beast :
http://www.actingmachines.com/img/photos/24_big.jpg
On 27/07/2017 23:58, Pete Lancashire via cctalk wrote:
No association with the seller, just passing the info on ....
http://www.ebay.com/itm/142458218680
I did a project for C-Itoh / Sperry years ago to do an interface board
to run a CI-300 / 600 / 900 on a mainframe, I think the 1100.
The interface channel the mainframe used could be fitted to the
UTS-40, so they had shipped a system as you describe to us with CPM,
so I could print to the channel interface for testing my interface
board / firmware.
I had to run the channel to pull the lines of information, and
translate them to the line printer in more or less "normal" streaming
format. I also had a serial channel added so you could flip an option
and run from the channel to any serial port, so there was no need to
burn up paper.
The system was quite solid, built like a tank.
At the time TWA was still operating, and with an appropriate keyboard,
they used the UTS-40 for airline res terminals. When they were moved
to Saber when Pars was killed off, there was a temporary surge of the
terminal boxes, but the keyboards would have been a pain to use, and
there was no simple way to add the 8" drive subsystem you have.
Hope you fix it, it is an impressive CP/M system. representative of
"anything worth doing is worth overdoing" as far as CP/M. So much
hardware that never gets touched when running that.
If you happen to have drawings or pointer to such (if on bitsavers as
I write, I have not checked) I'd be interested of stashing such in
case one ever drops in my lap.
thanks
Jim
