Datapoint 1800 workstation

UvA Computer Museum catalogue nr 97.24

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The Datapoint 1800 (1977) is a fully programmable, stand-alone machine with 60k user RAM, 4k system ROM, and an 8-bit CPU built from a TTL chip set. It has a detachable keyboard and a 25 x 80 characters screen. Using its 8" floppy-disk based operating system it can run Datapoint programmes, including COBOL and Pascal compilers, and Microsoft's Multiplan (predecessor to Excel). With Datashare software, a single 1800 can handle five users, four of them using terminals like the Datapoint 3300, connected through serial lines.

Our Datapoint 1800 acted, in conjunction with an external dual 8" floppy drive, a punched-card reader and an interface unit, as a remote peripheral of a CDC Cyber mainframe, using Control Data's 200UT (User Terminal) protocol. It was used during the early 1980's by SWIDOC (Documentation Centre for Information of the Social Sciences); the Cyber was located at SARA (Academic Computing Centre Amsterdam).

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Thanks to Henri Socha for commenting on our earlier description. Henri wrote, in the 1970's, the Datapoint 1800's micro-coded instruction set.
rev April 17, 2015.