Computer sheds - Cromemco

BobNotes

Initial note from Hugh follows about the rescued systems:

If there was a hard disc, it will be in the container! 🙂

Basically we are looking at two separate systems. The big one was the complete control and recording system for MK Electric's test and QA lab in North London. lots of machines switching switches on and off, pushing and pulling plugs etc etc, each rig having a Cromenco associated with it and a central control unit governing and controlling. I never saw it, but Bill designed and built it the computing side of it - the whole real-time setup - and while there was a techie on site running and maintaining it on a day to day basis, Bill was in and out of there on regular visits throughout the lifetime of the system which was some years.

Sadly we never found/saved/recovered his day logs of his working life, so all I can recall is many hours of talking about the stuff and hearing about the many issues it had - not least the original 8" FDDs which had voice coil actuating mechanisms and were incredibly difficult to setup and maintain! I've some photos of the kit in place - but its still very unsorted - and there may be more descriptions, notes etc when I've finally disentangled his computer archives.

The second setup I was more familiar with: it was one machine which controlled, ran and monitored a large fruit warehouse in Luton - some £10m's worth of fruit stored there at any one time with gas, humidity, temperature etc sensors all running back into the rig that's in the container and linked to the Cromenco that drove it.

I'm pretty certain we have the listing of the driving program: Bill's programs were incredibly well documented - often a comment on each line (all in machine code) - and while the system ran satisfactorily for years the one time it fell over was when Bill was on holiday diving in Gyana (I think!). I then had to go out to Luton and reboot it into a safe (if imperfect) mode before the fruit all went off - yike - that was a bit of a panic struck job! Bill had talked me through it before he went and I had the code listing to work from and got it working - but what a complement to his programming that I was able to do so.

As far as I know those were the only two Cromenco applications he did (I've photos of the warehouse setup as well). I cant recall if he did any other big real-time jobs - the later work of Data Highways Ltd was mainly humdrum supply and support of various small businesses and a lot of web design and support. His most important customers were Lawrence Marks & Maurice Gran - authors and playwrights - "Birds of a Feather", "Good night Sweetheart" etc etc and he got them into computer use back in the late 70's I think - I was talking to them after he died and they attribute a lot of their success to his help and guidance on computer use and organisation. on the back of that he wrote a "scriptwriter's toolbox" which he sold quite a few copies of - I may try to get that back on a working website sometime - i've got it all here.

That's a brief summary of some of the bits of his post University of London Computer Centre work - where he was originally the chief programmer of the Atlas setup and then Programming Manager of the CDC6600 & later ops centre.

I need to gather together what I can from his material I have here and write him up properly - not just my closest friend, but an incredibly gifted technical computer person who needs to be remembered.

Hugh

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