Computing Services Archives

The Prime minicomputers provided a service from 1979 to June 1993. There were five of them at the high water mark, and they provided the main online service for most of those years, until the Unix machines took over.

Click on any of the images to see an enlarged version.

The last Prime computer lurking in the corner of the computer room. It is
already being crowded out by the new Novell servers in the foreground.

Prime A, a 9950 model, with 3 x 600Mb drives and 2 x 300Mb drives.

The 9-track magnetic tape deck and the Exabyte drive (top right)

The University of Sheffield Post email system was supplied to Prime UK in exchange for extra hardware. This is the photo call after the deal was signed, with Ian Roberts and Sue Clacher on the left, and Dermot McLain (director of Academic Computing Services) and Peter Mason (programmer of the Post system) on the right.

All lined in front of the Prime ...

... and made to look foolish by the
photographer.

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	The last Prime computer lurking in the corner of the computer room. It is already being crowded out by the new Novell servers in the foreground.
	Prime A, a 9950 model, with 3 x 600Mb drives and 2 x 300Mb drives.
	The 9-track magnetic tape deck and the Exabyte drive (top right)
	The University of Sheffield Post email system was supplied to Prime UK in exchange for extra hardware. This is the photo call after the deal was signed, with Ian Roberts and Sue Clacher on the left, and Dermot McLain (director of Academic Computing Services) and Peter Mason (programmer of the Post system) on the right.
	All lined in front of the Prime ...
	... and made to look foolish by the photographer.