The UNIVAC 490 was a 30-bit word magnetic-core memory machine with 16K or 32K words; 4.8 microsecond cycle time made by UNIVAC. It was a commercial derivative of the instruction set that had been developed for the AN/USQ-17bySeymour Cray for the US Navy. This was the last machine that Cray designed before leaving UNIVAC to join the early Control Data Corporation.
Univac Federal Systems would further developed this system into the AN/USQ-20 for the United States Navy. That system was the heart of the Naval Tactical Data System which pioneered the use of shipboard computers for air defense. The military version went by a variety of names: UNIVAC 1232,[1] AN/USQ-20, MIL-1206 and CP642.
At least 47 of these machines were made (serial numbers run from 101 to 147). Six were installed at NASA and played important roles in Gemini and the Apollo missions. The U490 had complete control of most or all of the data readout screens in Houston Mission Control. The USAF had two installed, as did Lockheed.[2]
Airlines using the 490 Real-Time system included Eastern and Northwest Orient – principally airline reservations systems at Eastern Air Lines (1963) and British European Airways (BEACON – 1964).[3][4][5] Other commercial installations of the 490 Real-Time included two at Westinghouse, and one each at Alcoa, U.S. Steel, Bethlehem Steel and General Motors.[2]
The only surviving, nearly complete, original, civilian version of the 490 Real Time System is on display at System Source in Hunt Valley, Maryland. It has six banks of memory cores. System Source also has a nearly complete set of original documentation for the machine, including original blueprints and troubleshooting data. This includes the Boss and Wilen document.[2]
The standard Operating System was REX (RealTime Exec), except at Eastern and B.E.A. where a custom operating system was developed for airline reservations (CONTORTS – CONTrol Of Real Time System). CONTORTS was the origin of Univac's subsequent RT operating systems for 494 (STARS) and later converted to the 1100 Series (RTOS).
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The instruction word format:
Numbers were represented in ones' complement.
The machine provided the programmer with the following registers:
Construction (Arithmetic unit only)[6]
In June 1965 UNIVAC launched a family of successor systems known as the UNIVAC 490 Modular Real Time Systems. This consisted of the UNIVAC 491, 492 and 494.[7] The 494 was heavily used by NASA as part of the communications complex for the Apollo Mission.[8] Other users include BEA, Iberia Airlines,[9][10] Scandinavian Airlines[11] and Lufthansa.[12]
Subsequently as UNIVAC decided to focus on the UNIVAC 1100/2200 series an option to run the 1110/80 in 494 mode was added. This emulator was implemented using microcode.
