
UNIVAC Type                 1206        1212                    1218*       1213        1219B       1230        1289        3250
Mil Type        AN/USQ-17   CP-642A     CP-642B     CP-667      CP-789      CP-808      CP-848      CP-855      CP-890      AN/UYK-7
1st Delivery    fall 1958   about 1960  4/26/1963   7/20/1964   4/1/1963    4/14/1967   5/25/1965   7/30/1965   6/7/1967    3/25/1970
Customer        BUSHIPS     BUSHIPS     BUSHIPS     NEL         Navy        USMC        BTL         NASA        USN-SSM     NAVSEA
Total Built     6           17          239         3           326         19          367         120         164         1000+
Nick Name       Q-17        NTDS        20B                     UYK-5       TYK         TALOS***                C-3****
Specification               DS4601      DS4654                              DS4781      DS4769      DS4836
 comments                   Note 1      Note 2                  Note 3                                                      Note 4
Power                                   2500                    1500                    1400        2400
Weight                                  2400                    775                     1000        1800
Module Size                             1.5x2.5"    1.5x2.5"    1.5x2.5"    1.5x2.5"    1.5x2.5"    1.5x2.5"    3.3x3.5"    3.3x3.5"
Module count                            1600                                                        1500
Memory Size     16k         32k         32k         131k        16k         32k         32k         32k         64k         48k+
Word Length     30          30          30          30/36**     18          30          18          30          30          32
Memory Speed    8 usec      8 usec      4 usec      4 usec      4 usec      2 usec      2 usec      2 usec      1.8 usec    1.5 usec

Note 1          The Navy's first standard computer for the Naval Tactical Data Systems
Note 2          This computer ISA spawned the Univac commercial 490 series of computers
Note 3          This computer ISA spawned the Univac commercial 418 series of computers
Note 4          Second generation Naval Tactical Data Systems standard computer
Note 5          Inputs to fill in any blanks are welcome.

*     This design was originally conceived as a computer unit tester before becoming the heart of the Navy's logistics system.
**    a flip of a switch would cause operation in 30 bit or 36 bit mode.
***   Variations were used to launch Talos, Tarter, and Terrier missles; ship to air and ship to shore devices.
****  The C-3 became the Trident Submarine navigation core, guiding submarines under the polar ice cap.

Donated by Lowell A. Benson         Univac Unisys employee 7/60 to 3/'94        1/17/2006, UNIVACequip.xls


Orig URL: http://www.usfamily.net/web/labenson/Legacy_files/UNIVACequip.pdf

---

http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/univac-ntds.html

The 642A was all germanium transistors. The 642B used silicon. Both had a 1 MHZ clock, divided into four phases. 
Instructions were from 4 microsec. to 48 microsec., depending on the operation. Memory was ferrite core. 
Cycle time was 8 microsec., 4 to do the destructive read, and another 4 to write back in from of the Z register.

Both had an unusual hardware square root routine. The op code was for divide (23), but it extracted the root if 
the k register was 7. The X register did an elaborate shift process, which took 48 microseconds.

You can't really apply core technology criteria to these old Univacs. In a way, every manufacturer had a core 
technology, but things were still evolving from some really primitive beginnings, so I wouldn't think of the 
differences as such. The distinction between a 642A (Univac 1206) and a 642B (Univac 1208) was pretty slight.

The biggest difference was the change from germanium to silicon transistors. As the germanuim transistors were 
non-standard, the change probably save Univac significant cost per unit. The old germanium transistors were 
housed in a grain of wheat sized casing, with fine insulated wired coming out one end. The transistor had to 
be mounted in a nylon clip, and then each wire had to be stripped and hand inserted into its hole in the pc board. 
Has to be labor-intensive.

Both computers used PNP transistors, so a logic Low was true, and a High was false.TTL was hard to get used to after 
I got out of the Service.

The other differences were small. The 642A had more elaborate circuitry for memory. There were manual adjustments 
for the X, Y and Z drive currents. The 642B had a Z current adjustment only, as I recall. The 642B could have its 
I/O channels sped up from 125 Kword/sec. to double that rate. Some problems apparently crept in, as there was an 
engineering kludge in the ODR timing circuit. It was two flip-flops that had been added. One was named Finkbine,
 and the other Gomez. I noticed that the newer Mil-Standard 802C prints omitted the names.

It just popped into my head that the logic in the 642A was basically all NOR gates, while the 642B was all NAND 
gates. The prints were reprenented in something called bubble logic, where each element was a circle. 802C was 
lots easier to interpret.

Without prints and such, that's about all I can recall of these computers. Hope this helps,

Bill Bennett