Definition
The Burroughs B1700 was a business-oriented computer system manufactured by the Burroughs Corporation, a U.S. company that produced mainframe and mid‑range computers during the mid‑20th century.
Overview
Introduced in the early 1970s, the B1700 formed part of Burroughs’s effort to provide a scalable, high‑performance platform for commercial data‑processing applications such as accounting, inventory control, and transaction processing. It was marketed to medium‑sized enterprises and government agencies that required reliable batch and online processing capabilities. The system was positioned between the smaller B1000 series and the larger B5000 family, offering a balance of cost, capacity, and expandability.
Etymology / Origin
The designation follows Burroughs’s naming convention, in which the letter “B” denotes the company’s product line and the numeric suffix identifies the specific model. The “1700” figure does not correspond to a particular technical specification but rather indicates its placement within the company’s product hierarchy.
Characteristics
- Architecture – The B1700 employed a hardware architecture derived from Burroughs’s earlier B5000 design, featuring a stack‑oriented instruction set and support for high‑level languages.
- Processor – It used a proprietary Burroughs processor built with discrete transistor logic; later versions incorporated early integrated circuits.
- Memory – Primary storage consisted of magnetic core memory with capacities ranging from 32 KB to 256 KB, configurable according to customer requirements.
- Input/Output – Standard I/O peripherals included magnetic tape drives, punched‑card readers, line printers, and disk storage units (often the Burroughs “Magnetics” disk packs).
- Operating System – The system ran a Burroughs‑developed OS that provided batch processing, multiprogramming, and transaction‑monitor capabilities; specific OS names and versions are not uniformly documented.
- Programming Languages – Supported languages typically included COBOL for business applications, ALGOL for scientific use, and an assembly language specific to the B1700 instruction set.
- Modularity – The hardware was designed as a series of plug‑in modules, allowing customers to expand CPU, memory, and I/O capacity without replacing the entire system.
Accurate information is not confirmed for several detailed specifications (e.g., exact processor clock speed, precise OS version names, and production dates) due to limited publicly available documentation.
Related Topics
- Burroughs Corporation – The parent company that produced a range of computer systems from the 1950s until its merger into Unisys in 1986.
- Burroughs B5000 – A pioneering stack‑oriented mainframe introduced in the early 1960s, whose architectural concepts influenced later Burroughs models, including the B1700.
- Unisys – The successor organization formed from the merger of Burroughs and Sperry; many Burroughs systems were later supported under the Unisys brand.
- Mainframe computers – Large, high‑performance computers used primarily by businesses and governments for bulk data processing.
- COBOL – A high‑level programming language widely used on business-oriented systems such as the B1700.