Burroughs B5500 Mainframe Maintenance Panel

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen & Paul Kimpel)

This is a portion of a maintenance panel for a B5500 mainframe system. Part of a CPU panel is in the top half of the photo, with parts of two I/O Control Units (channels) in the lower half. These panels were normally hidden behind a door of the mainframe cabinetry and not visible. They were used for maintenance and problem diagnosis, not operating the system.

Burroughs Magnetic Core Memory from Illiac II - 1962

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Burroughs Mainframe circuit components

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen & Paul Kimpel)

These are "parallel plate" circuit components used in the B100/200/300/500 and B5000/5500 systems during the 1960s. These plugged into a backplane that was wire-wrapped on the other side to make connections between components.

Burroughs Mainframe circuit components

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen & Paul Kimpel)

These are "parallel plate" circuit components used in the B100/200/300/500 and B5000/5500 systems during the 1960s. These plugged into a backplane that was wire-wrapped on the other side to make connections between components.

Burroughs L5000 Boards

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Circuit Board

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Burroughs Memory Read/Write Board

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Burroughs Head Select Board

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Burroughs Magnetic Core Memory Board

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Burroughs B5500 Magnetic Core Memory

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Burroughs B7800 Central Processor Module Front Panel

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen & Paul Kimpel)

Like the B5500 panel above, this was used for maintenance, not operation of the system, and was normally hidden behind the "skins" of the cabinetry.

Burroughs B7800 Head-per-track Disk

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Burroughs B7800 Module

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen & Paul Kimpel)

This appears to be a diagnostic panel for a "D machine." These were used in the B700/800 systems and in disk-pack controllers. It's possible it could have been part of the disk subsystem for a B7800.

Burroughs Circuit Board

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Burroughs Read/Write head from Head-per-Track Disk

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen & Paul Kimpel)

Burroughs B7800 Circuit Board

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Burroughs Circuit Board

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Burroughs BX350 Circuit Board

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen)

Tubes

(courtesy of Ole Hagen Jensen & Paul Kimpel)

This is a plug-in circuit module for either an ElectroData Datatron 205 or a Burroughs 220 computer system, although I suspect it was for the former. Both were decimal machines, and a module like this would have been one digit in a register. Burroughs bought Electrodata in 1956, which became the basis of their commercial computer business, based in Pasadena, California (Los Angeles area).

Question about Core Memory

from Larry Hall