494

The UNIVAC 494 was a 30-bit word machine and successor to the UNIVAC 490/492 with faster CPU and 131K (later 262K) core memory. Up to 24 I/O channels were available and the system was usually shipped with UNIVAC FH880 or UNIVAC FH432 or FH1782 magnetic drum storage. The basic operating system was OMEGA (the successor to REX for the 490) although custom operating systems were also used (e.g. CONTORTS for airline reservations). NASA made extensive use of the 30-bit family (1230, 642A, 642B and 494) of systems in their Deep Space Tracking Network during the Apollo missions. It was introduced around 1966.

This emulator implements the complete 494 instruction set, console, card reader, card punch, printer and FH880 magnetic drum. Since no original software has been located for the 494 I had to write a fairly simple, cooperative multi-tasking operating system for the emulator. The emulator includes a Windows based assembler and linker, my operating system, various utilities and a large collection of original Univac manuals. The emulator has an integrated machine language debugger so you can debug any programs that you may choose to write.

No documentation could be found that described the meaning of the blinking lights on the maintenance panel so the emulator shows the contents of various registers and whatnot in text boxes.

This emulator was written by me, so if you have any questions or (heaven forbid) bugs to report you can contact me and I will do my best to help you.

You can download the emulator here: Windows installer