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 Data General Nova 1200 front panel | |
| Manufacturer | Data General |
|---|---|
| Product family | Nova |
| Operating system | RDOS |
The Data General Nova is a series of 16-bit minicomputers released by the American company Data General. The Nova family was very popular in the 1970s and ultimately sold tens of thousands of units.
The first model, known simply as "Nova", was released in 1969.[1] The Nova was packaged into a single 3U rack-mount case and had enough computing power to handle most simple tasks. The Nova became popular in science laboratories around the world. It was followed the next year by the SuperNOVA, which ran roughly four times as fast, making it the fastest mini for several years.
Introduced during a period of rapid progress in integrated circuit (or "microchip") design, the line went through several upgrades over the next five years, introducing the 800 and 1200, the Nova 2, Nova 3, and ultimately the Nova 4. A single-chip implementation was also introduced as the microNOVA in 1977, but did not see widespread use as the market moved to new microprocessor designs. Fairchild Semiconductor also introduced a microprocessor version of the Nova in 1977, the Fairchild 9440, but it also saw limited use in the market.
The Nova line was succeeded by the Data General Eclipse, which was similar in most ways but added virtual memory support and other features required by modern operating systems. A 32-bit upgrade of the Eclipse resulted in the Eclipse MV series of the 1980s.