Very interesting. I worked for ROCC in the late 70's
and early 80's on these and other similar systems. If
I remember rightly, these may be the first generation
of Rocc's bit slice processor systems. Up until that
point the systems were essentially DG processors with
a lot of other OEM peripherals bolted on. Proprietary
terminals were required. Of course I could be wrong
about the model number... but here goes anyway.
ROCC was in the office systems business and also big
suppliers of Viewdata systems. These were often used
as data entry and collation systems as front ends to
corporate mainframes. Again, if memory serves me, the
working title for these was 'Furnace Green' systems
(named for the area near to the Crawley manufacturing
plant where we built them). Typical configurations
would be 1M of semiconductor memory, a 16bit
processor, a uart board driving a Gandalf modem rack
for Viewdata access (with 1200/75 modems), a "scanner"
board driving data entry terminals and tape and disk
controllers with a cold-start panel running across the
front. I think these systems had Fujitsu winchesters
in them but ROCC also sold them with 33MB and 66MB
Ampex drives with removeable disk packs.
Not sure about the vacuum drives - I remember Digidata
9 track drives front-mounted.
Would love to see pictures if you can post them
anywhere.
Hope this helps. Make a lot of room for these as they
are quite big with peripherals. Software will be a
problem so try to salvage any tapes or disk packs that
you can lay your hands on. Try to get hold of a
programmer's panel as well - this will give you
lights-and-switches access to the processor and
devices. The instruction set will resemble the Nova
instruction set.
Regards,
Dave
--- Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
>
> Anyone know what these are? Just been offered a
> couple of processor
> boxes with cache streamers, front-loading reel tape
> drives with vacuum
> load, and some sort of disk units ("platters the
> size of dinner plates"
> I was quoted) + terminals, printers, cabling etc.
>
> I'm awaiting photos, thought I'd ask in the meantime
> though.
>
> I assumed at first (from the mention of the size of
> things and the age)
> that it was "just" rebranded DEC stuff, but I could
> be wrong.
>
> Google didn't seem to have anything useful to say on
> 'ROCC' though,
> other than a modern systems company who could well
> have been around in
> the 70's selling rebadged equipment I suppose...
>
> Sounds like stuff that should be saved anyway, so
> reserve space in those
> garages now :-)
>
> cheers,
>
> Jules
>
>
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Received on Thu Jun 17 2004 - 11:38:25 BST