Callan Data (old 68000 box) boot problem

King Ables ables at lot.ACA.MCC.COM
Wed Mar 6 09:36:26 AEST 1991


A friend of a friend has approached me with a problem that I think
will only be solved if someone else happens to have what he needs.

He has an old, old, old (did I mention it was old?) Unix system, a
Callan Data Unistar 100 (multibus architecture), running v7.  He dug
it out of a closet in his company and has been playing around with it.
For a while it was working but now has a corrupted boot block and won't
boot.  He couldn't find a boot floppy in any of the boxes.  He tried to
contact Callan Data but they are apparently out of business.  He tried
to contact UniSoft (who did the port) but they were not only unhelpful
but rude (his words... I would have expected them to be little help with
such an old port, and I've never known them to go out of their way to
even be nice, either, so I'm not surprised).

He knows he could go out and buy a new machine and that this one is a
museum piece, but he'd like to make sure he's exhausted all his options
before giving up... so I put the following questions:

a) does someone have an old boot floppy from this thing they'd be
   willing to copy for him or give him or otherwise provide to him
   so that he can reboot and reinstall his system?

b) does anybody have any suggestions about alternative ways of getting
   a version of Unix on this thing (surely nobody ELSE ported a version
   to it, but I figured it was worth asking)?

c) does anybody know anybody else not on the net who might be able to
   help out (and of course, who would be willing to)?

I will be glad to collect responses and talk to him if you simply want
to pass information or ideas to him... in that case just send mail to me.

If you wish to ask questions of the guy to find out more or arrange a
disk swap or anything, I would prefer that you talk to him directly.  His
name is Duhan and he can be reached by phone at +1 512 258 3819.  I will
pass messages along to him if you want him to call you.

Thanks for any leads.
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King Ables                    Micro Electronics and Computer Technology Corp.
ables at mcc.com                 3500 W. Balcones Center Drive
+1 512 338 3749               Austin, TX  78759
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