Computer history: CDC systems

 

Control Data Corporation Systems at TNO Waalsdorp

The TNO Physics Laboratory, the forerunner of the TNO Physics and Electronic Laboratory and the current TNO location The Hague Waalsdorp, used various Control Data Corporation (CDC) mainframe systems and systems manufactured by several other computer suppliers in the seventies through the nineties. This computer history page contains technical aspects based on the memories of the computer pioneering time by operators and system programmers. We also used old photographs and sparse documentation that survived clean-ups.

System software

• Control Data 6000 series systems and their successors
• Network Operating System/Batch Environment (NOS/BE) and its predecessor SCOPE
  • Input and output
  • Scope 3.4 and NOS/BE permanent files
  • Peripheral processor programs
  • Operator console interface
  • Building the Operating system
• Network Operating System/Virtual Environment (NOS/VE)
  • NOS/VE, base architecture
  • File system architecture
  • System Command Language (SCL)
  • System commands
  • Libraries and utilities

Hardware and architecture

• 6000 series hardware architecture: CPU and memory
• 6000 series hardware architecture: Peripheral processors
• 6000 series CPU instruction set (first RISC processor)
• 6000 series PP instruction set
• 180 series architecture
• CDC CYBER 180 and 900 series of systems at TNO

Peripheral equipment

• 6000/Cyber peripheral equipment

Other Control Data systems

• System 17/Cyber 18 equipment
• CDC 4380 (MIPS 3840)
• ETA10 systems

Relative cyber performance figures

• The relative performance of the CDC Cyber Systems

(special thanks to Mark Riordan for providing some information for these pages)

 
Back