Honeywell 6000
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Honeywell 6000, (GE-600)
a family of 36-bit mainframe computers manufactured by Honeywell International, Inc. from 1970 to 1989 build from TTL SSI integrated circuits and ferrite core memory. They were re-badged versions of General Electric's GE-600-series originating in the 1960s as discrete transistor machines. The architecture was similar to the IBM 7090. The GE-600 aka Honeywell 6000 used 36-bit words and 18-bit addresses and had two 36-bit accumulators A and Q, eight 18-bit index registers X0 - X7, and one 8-bit exponent register to support floating point with the mantissa in both 36-bit single-precision and 2 x 36-bit double precision.
Systems were constructed of three main kinds of interconnected units, CPUs, system control units including memory, and I/O multiplexer (IOM) to connect peripherals, disk storage and tape drives.
Contents
Selected Systems
GE-635/645
The GE-635 as member of the GE-600 series was likely the first general purpose SMP system, though the GCOS/GECOS operating system treated the processors as a master and up to three slaves. At Dartmouth College, the GE-635 was used to develop Dartmouth Time Sharing System starting in 1965, while Multics was developed by MIT [2], General Electric and Bell Labs requiring virtual memory of the hardware advanced GE-645 [3] [4]. The Dartmouth College chess programs Dartmouth CP and Dart 4.1 ran on the GE-635.
Level 66/68
Introduced in 1975, Level 66/68 were enhanced versions of the 6000 series, running GCOS/Multics. GCOS models included the 66/05, /10, /20, /40, /60 and /80, particular models with various memory sizes, etc.. Systems could have a maximum of seven CPUs and four IOMs, the total of the two restricted to eight [5].
DPS 8
The Honeywell DPS8 was a descendant of the GE-645 released in 1983. The DPS8/70 is a particular model in the line [6]. Phoenix played the WCCC 1983 on such a $10 million machine.
Chess Programs
See also
Publications
- Edward L. Glaser, John F. Couleur, G. A. Oliver (1965). System Design of a Computer for Time Sharing Applications. Fall Joint Computer Conference
Manuals
- General Electric (1964). GE-635 System Manual. hosted by Computing History - The UK Computer Museum - Cambridge
- General Electric (1964). GE-625 / 635 Programming Reference Manual. hosted by Ed Thelen
- General Electric (1968). GE-645 System Manual. pdf
- Honeywell (1971). Series 6000 Summary Description. pdf
- Honeywell (1985). AL39 - Multics Processor Manual. pdf
Brochures
- Honeywell Level 68 Multics System: Focusing on Today's Interactive Processing Needs (1973) hosted by The Computer History Museum
- Honeywell: The Multics System (1975) hosted by The Computer History Museum
Postings
- Info on GE-635 by Charles Richmond, alt.folklore.computers, January 29, 1991
- Re: the legacy of Seymour Cray by Alan Bowler, alt.folklore.computers, January 08, 2016
External Links
- GE-600 series from Wikipedia
- Honeywell 6000 series from Wikipedia
- Honeywell 6000 series - Computer History Wiki
- Honeywell L66 DPS8 DPS8000 - Daniel T O'Callahan - IT Consulting
- Honeywell DPS8 by Ed Thelen
References
- ↑ The Dartmouth Computing Timeline - The 1960s
- ↑ Multics - Multiplexed Information and Computing Service
- ↑ Multics - photo and specifications
- ↑ Edward L. Glaser, John F. Couleur, G. A. Oliver]] (1965). System Design of a Computer for Time Sharing Applications. Fall Joint Computer Conference
- ↑ Honeywell 6000 series - Computer History Wiki
- ↑ Honeywell DPS8 by Ed Thelen
