Over the weekend, I took delivery of some very rare computers: WICATs. (in her best hipster voice) Yeah, you've probably never heard of them. As far as I know, they were the
first commercially available computer system based on the Motorola 68000 CPU, the same CPU that powered the Macintosh (1984-1994), the Amiga, the Atari ST and others.
These machines made a lot of inroads in educational institutions, but these machines came from a Canadian insurance company.
Of the 9 (!) WICATs I received, there are 3 different types.
The first is the WICAT 150, which is an all-in-one design sporting a monitor and keyboard along with two full-height 5.25" bays. The standard config would have a 5.25" floppy disk and a hard drive. Inside, there is a 6-slot Multibus backplane that would have held a CPU card, a RAM card, and a drive controller at a bare minimum. The back panel has either 5 or 7 serial ports (to connect up more terminals), plus a parallel port (for a printer). It was intended as a multi-user system.
Of the two I received, neither has any boards installed, and has no keyboard, floppy drive or hard drive, making these hard to restore to a useful state. I did receive some CPUs and RAM I can put in them, though. One of the two has a graphics board; the older supports text only. Both have serious cosmetic damage, some bodged wiring (one has packing tape over a wire splice - ugh!) and the power supplies look to need rebuilding as well.
( Picture of my incomplete WICAT 150WS )The second type is the WICAT S1250. These machines look for all the world like a PC AT from the front, with two full-height 5.25" drive bays on the right and the power supply on the left. They have basically the same internal structure as the 150s, but without the CRT and terminal hardware. The back sports up to 20 serial ports, 2 parallel ports, plus options to add things like IEEE-4888 (GPIB), ARCnet LAN networking, the custom Hydra audio interface (which could provide a dedicated audio channel to each connected terminal, useful for language labs), and even AUI-based Ethernet.
Of the two I received, both seem in good condition. Both have a full compliment of cards, including upgraded CPU cards (16MHz 68020s with 4MB of RAM onboard!) One even had its power supply serviced by the insurance company - who were competent enough to perform component-level repair! (There's a sticker on a capacitor with the company's logo + date the cap was replaced. I miss places that gave their IT departments this level of latitude.)
( 2 pictures of my relatively complete WICAT S1250s )The third type of machine in the delivery is the WICAT S2255/S2275, which is a pedestal, desk-side type machine. These units slide out the back after removing 4 screws, exposing 3 fans on the top, a power supply in the bottom, a 12-card Multibus card cage in the middle, and enough room at the front for up to 12 half-height 5.25" hard drives. One full-height or two half-height bays are exposed through the front panel. All 5 of these machines have a tape drive there (either QIC-150-style 1/4" tape, or 4mm DDS/DAT), and some have a hard drive in the same mount if there's room.
In the photos below, you'll see the card cage of one before I cleaned up the dust. The cards, from left to right, are the upgraded 16MHz 68020 CPU, 3x ICI-8 (Intelligent Computer Interface, provides 8 serial ports + 1 parallel port, driven by its
own 68000 chip, allowing speeds up to 19200 on all ports at once!), and all the way to the right, a SCSI drive controller that also has 4MB of system expansion RAM. If you look closely, you can see orange Kapton tape covering the battery holder on the back of the CPU board that keeps the real time clock running. (The machines won't boot without a fresh battery installed here.)
Of the 5 machines I received, all seem in good shape. All have the upgraded CPU card, varying amounts of RAM, at least one ICI card, and a SCSI controller. One also has an ARCnet LAN networking board.
( 2 pictures of my fully functional WICAT S2275 )I've dumped all of the SCSI hard drives - most over 20 years old, ranging from 300MB to 4GB - to my home server, and will try booting from one soon. Here's what the bootup sequence looks like on the pictured S2275 with no drives installed and a fresh clock battery:
Booting...
Valid ports are: 0 1 2 3
System clock rate is 16.7 Mhz
Memory test...
Good RAM detected: 8192K
System clock is good.
Calendar clock is running.
If you'd like to see the full photo album, which shows some of the huge pile of floppies I received, as well as boxes of documentation,
be my guest.
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