The original Rolm 1601 ads were for "Ruggedized" Novas even though they were
really MilSpec'ed as Chris K. corrected. I guess marketing thought
"Ruggedized" sounded better.. uhhhh.... more rugged?... than MilSpec'ed.
They have the MilSecs annotated in their sales literature and the MTBF
calculations described in other manuals (I didn't think anybody interested
enought for me to put them on the web site.) Norden's (United Technologies)
claim to competitive fame was the ruggedized DEC 11 and VAX stuff, and was a
"ruggedized" version of the corresponding commercial hardware.
Oh, Chris, the MSE/30 is now pictured on the Rolm page at the
www.SimuLogics.com site (www.SimuLogics.com/nostalgia/rolm/rolm.htm). I
never did get to use ARTS[/32] and don't have any info on it... anything
hiding in the documentation shelf?
Bruce
bkr_at_SimuLogics.com
-or-
bkr_at_WildHareComputers.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Kennedy" <chris_at_mainecoon.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2001 12:33 PM
Subject: RE: D-116 Digital Computer Controls - minicomputer
> Bruce wrote:
>
> > Rolm systems were used in some very "cool" ruggedized applications, some
> we
> > can even talk about now. They extended the standard Nova instruction
set
> > like most other 3rd party knockoffs did, but typically standard DG
> software
> > was used for program development by us poor software types.
>
>
> "Ruggedized"? Puh-lease ;-) Norden made "ruggedized" stuff, meaning
> commercial
> boards stuffed into a beefed-up chassis. We made _militarized_ stuff at
> ROLM,
> which with of two painful exceptions were not even based on DG
> implementations
> (so-called "punches" of DG machines; one was a 1/2 ATR S/130 clone, the
> other
> was a punch of the MV8K that was so incredibly miserable that only two
were
> built).
>
> Life at ROLM started with the 1601, which was essentially a Nova 800, and
> progressed through the 1666, which added things like stacks but in a
fashion
> utterly incompatible with the way DG wedged them into the Nova 3. Most
> 16XX series machines went to the Navy, although as far as I can tell the
> largest single buyer of them was MacDAC for use in the GLCM/SLCM
(ground/sea
> launch cruise missile) erector/launch system. As an interesting(?) aside,
> the 16xx machines maintained the Nova I/O bus, including the utter lack of
> parity or any other form of error detection. When the NAB people got wind
> of
> this they went (understandably) nuts and Eddie Yee had to work magic with
> ROLM's version of RTOS in order for the system to qualify for use with
> "specials".
>
> As Bruce suggested, _most_ DG code would run on ROLM processors, although
> ROLM also vended its own operating systems (ARTS and ARTS/32) and peddled
> their own language (MSL -- The "MilSpec Language" which looked a great
deal
> like something between BCPL and C, minus byte pointers, which were a pain
in
> the ass to make work right thanks to the fact that the Nova was a word
> oriented
> machine).
>
> The culmination of hardware at ROLM was the Hawk/32, which was an original
> implementation of the Eagle (MV) architecture, which was supposed to be
> coupled
> with a painfully advanced B3-secure distributed OS named MARVIN (the
> derivation
> of the name is complex; basically those of us who were originally assigned
> to
> the project were considered to have bad attitudes so the project took its
> name
> from the similarly attitude-impaired android from "The Hitchhiker's Guide
to
> The Galaxy". When pressed by marketing for the underlying meaning of the
> term,
> we offered up "Multiprocessor Advanced Virtually Interconnected Network",
> which
> the marketing drones gobbled up and immediately started regurgitating to
the
> customer base). MARVIN hit the dustbin about the time that the MSC
division
> was purchased from IBM by Loral.
>
> In a blast-from-the-past, the PlayStation II/CPU2 project brought three of
> us
> ROLM refugees together at Toshiba. Each of us had in tow a statue of a
hawk
> that was handed out upon completion of the Hawk/32 project. As each of us
> jointed the project the staff would be abuzz about how we were stealing
this
> statue from each other -- until they realized that there were several of
> these
> things running around the office...
>
> Back to the D-116; I have a complete set of prints hanging about if
someone
> needs
> copies. They appear to have belonged to a FE; the print for the front
panel
> has
> been attacked with color highlighters, and the microswitch that disables
the
> front panel when the key is in the "lock" position has a large circle
drawn
> around it with a like leading to handwritten text that reads:
>
> "Dear diary: Today is fucked".
>
>
> --
> Chris Kennedy
> chris_at_mainecoon.com
> http://www.mainecoon.com
> PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
Received on Tue May 08 2001 - 03:29:24 BST