Data General Corporation Eclipse S/130

    According to the The Comprehensive Computer Catalogue , this machine was introduced in 1974. I have reason to believe that this particular example dates from 1979 or so given some of the date codes on assorted chips.

    Like its cousin (half- brother?), the S/230 , this machine is a direct descendant of DG's Nova architecture. As in the Nova, there are 4 accumulators and a program address space defined by a 15-bit program counter. The maximum amount of memory without the optional "map" feature is 32 kW. With the optional map, the maximum amount of memory grows to 256 kW. Memory and ALU width are 16 bits. This example has the optional map board installed.

    Before arriving here, this machine served as part of the data-processing suite at TRIUMF , Canada's Meson facility in British Columbia.

    This machine has some nice non-DG hardware installed into it as well as the standard DG fare. These include an SMD disk drive controller and a controller for a Cipher style tape drive.

    Construction of the S/130 is in line with DG's practise at the time. This uses a printed- circuit backpanel with wire- wrap connections to the various attached peripherals. The S/130's console uses LEDs rather than incandescent lamps; this is the only classic DG machine I'm aware of that does so (they're not user- installed, either).

    One of the most interesting things about the system is the CPU2 board on which the data paths and ALU reside. It's identical to the one used in the Eclipse S/230 . The CPU1 (control) is different and contains goodies like the self- test program. The ALU is built around Schottky- TTL 74S181s.

    The speed of the machine is almost identical to the speed on the S/230 and somewhat faster than my fastest Nova, the Nova 4 . Details on my timing experiments are available here.

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