UNIVAC 9200, UNIVAC 9300
The Univac 9200 (Univac 9300) is a punch card computing data center from 1966. It is not common that such old devices are completely preserverd, furthermore all manuals are available. This system was stored over four years in the museum archives until we moved it with a freight company just into the museum, next to the UNIVAC 9400.
The restauration started with cleaning all the devices, removing the typical old rotten noise-absorbing mats at the very first. They have been replaced by brand new cellular rubber.
We expect most of the problems with all the mechanical parts that take most of the place in the cabins. We already removed transportation lockings and replaced some bearings, drive rollers and belts. The card puncher features 15 timing belts, for instance. The card reader (500 cards/minute) works again and the puncher mechanics is now executable, too. The processor link of these auxillary devices is another issue and will be checked in the near future.
UNIVAC 9300 electronic data processing system, with the entities (left to right): bar printer, cpu, "electronic cabinett" (power supply and plated wire memory), card reader, card puncher.
For optical reasons, we also repainted the cases.
Afterwards, we will address the bar printer. In contrast to the already mentioned devices, the printer cannot be controlled manually, so we will start up the processor, too. This will be a buggy job, too. But all the work is not for nothing, since the system is really unique, featuring punch card assembler programming.
We will continously update this page about the progress of the reparation untill the device is fully functional again.
UNIVAC 9300 electronic data processing system, uncovered while being restored
Restoration Blog
17.01.2010: There were some mice in the power supply and printer, they bit thorught some small cables.
16.02.2010: After locating two defect resistances the power supply is
running again. Thus we can use punch card devices from the CPU by now. Actually
we cannot read nor punch data.
Now there is another malfunctioning device: The
plated wire storage does not work. We try to get it working at least a bit,
replacing it with a new selfmade solid state memory. As you can read on our
detailed description of the
plated wire storage, this type of memory has always been very error-prone.
UNIVAC 9300 front panel: 160 states of processor and periphery can be indicated with light bulbes and selected via switches.
April 2010: The boot process of the device is still crashing. There is an error message from the printer without any reason. We are trying to locate this error.
Beginning of May 2010: A broken thyristor (hammer driver) raised the "printer error" message. Data integrity was the most important part at those time: If only one of the 140 printer columns is not working correctly, the whole printer goes offline to avoid wrong output.
Middle of May 2010: We could get the plated wire storage online. We can even start some small test programs via the input switches, but there are bugs while running. This is perhaps the unique device that still uses the old plated wire storage. Anyway we are planing a replacement.