The machines¶
Norsk Data sold CPU boards, cabinets, and systems made from the two. This folder keeps them apart, because that is how the machines actually worked: a Compact cabinet from 1985 and one from 1987 are the same box with a different card in it.
If you want the story rather than the specifications, read MACHINE-TIMELINE.md instead.
The four groups¶
A - Standalone 1xx machines One 16-bit CPU board in one cabinet. Runs NORD-TSS in the early days, then SINTRAN III. Runs 1xx programs, and nothing else. This was the volume business - most ND machines ever sold are these.
B - Coprocessor systems A 1xx machine plus a 32-bit compute processor in the same cabinet. The 1xx CPU is the I/O and control processor and runs SINTRAN III; the 32-bit CPU does the computing. These run everything a standalone 1xx runs, and 5xx programs as well. The ND-500 and ND-5000 families.
C - Butterfly Not an ND machine at all: a board set that plugs into an IBM PC/AT with a 286.
D - The early machines NORD-1 and NORD-10 and their relatives. Kept together because the family is small and, on these, the CPU and the machine are the same thing - there was no swapping boards between cabinets.
Why CPU and cabinet are separate documents¶
ND's own manual puts it plainly: "like the PDP-11 line, the CPU decided the name of the computer." You did not buy an "ND-110 Compact" as a distinct product - you bought a Compact and chose which CPU board went in it, and in 1986 ND explicitly offered upgrades of existing systems to the newer boards.
So: cpu/ documents describe boards, cabinets/ describe boxes, and systems/ describe the group-B combinations that ND sold under their own model numbers.
CPU boards¶
1xx - the 16-bit line (cpu/nd-1xx/)¶
Any of these goes in any 1xx cabinet, and each is also the I/O processor for some group-B system.
| Year | Board | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1979 | ND-100 | The whole CPU on one board, bit-sliced |
| 1981 | ND-100/CE | Decimal arithmetic, by a bigger microcode chip |
| 1982 | ND-100/CX | MOVEW, TSET, RDUS, segment changes |
| 1985 | ND-110 | Three custom gate arrays; CPU and memory management on one board |
| 1986 | ND-110/CX | 365 chips down to 228; front end for ND-500 systems |
| 1987 | ND-110/PCX | The same design on two PC cards - see Butterfly |
| 1985-87 | ND-120/CX | One LSI chip, "Delilah" |
| ~1994 [?] | ND-125/CX | More and faster on-board memory. The last one |
5xx - the 32-bit compute processors (cpu/nd-5xx/)¶
None of these runs on its own. Each needs a 1xx CPU beside it.
| Year | Board | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 1981 | ND-500 | The architecture itself - one design, four implementations |
| 1981 | ND-500/1 | First implementation |
| ~1982 | ND-500/2 | Second, with a prefetch processor |
| 1987 | ND-5000 | Samson and Rallar - third and fourth implementations |
Cabinets (cabinets/)¶
| Cabinet | Group | Backplanes | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Large (1xx) | A | One | The full 19-inch rack |
| Compact | A | One | Last ND machine delivered, 2001 |
| Satellite | A | One | COSMOS was named after it |
| Large (5xx) | B | Two or more | Different design from the 1xx large cabinet |
| 5000 Compact - COMSON | B | Two | Looks like a Compact; holds a whole 1xx machine and an ND-5000 |
Systems (systems/)¶
Group-B machines, sold under their own model numbers. Each names its cabinet, its 32-bit CPU and its 1xx I/O processor.
ND-500 line — ND-505 · ND-510/CX · ND-520 · ND-530/CX · ND-540 · ND-550/CX · ND-560/CX · ND-570/CX · ND-580/CX
ND-5000 line — ND-5200 · ND-5400 · ND-5500 · ND-5700 · ND-5800 · ND-5900
Rallar — ND-5830 · ND-5850 · ND-5950
The early machines (early/)¶
CPU and machine are one and the same here.
NORD-1 family — NORD-1 (1968) · NORD-2B · NORD-20 · NORD-5 (32-bit, needs a NORD-1)
NORD-10 family — NORD-10 (1973) · NORD-10/S · NORD-12 · NORD-42 · NORD-50 (32-bit, needs a NORD-10/S)
Note the NORD-50's host is a NORD-10/S, not a 1xx - which is why it sits here rather than with the group-B systems.
Also: - Catalog of type and model numbers - read this if the numbers confuse you. ND used five different numbering schemes at once; this decodes them and lists every system product number with what it means. - The list of surviving machines - 266 individual machines by serial number, with names, owners and status, from ND's own service register. Two are confirmed saved; 41 confirmed scrapped; the rest unaccounted for. - Machines we cannot confirm - names appearing in one source and nowhere else.
Confidence marks: [P] primary ND document held here, [S] secondary source, [?] disputed or single-source.
Images will be added later via Claude Design - see ../images/CREDITS.md for what is licensed.