5 Jun
1998
5 Jun
'98
7:08 a.m.
At 11:39 AM 6/5/98 -0700, Sam Ismail wrote:
Since I'm sure not many of you have ever heard of Nicolet Instrument
Corporation (Madison, Wisconsin), I'll tell you what I know so far. The
NIC-1080 is a 20-bit computer circa 1972. It has an assembler and a BASIC
via paper tape programs.
I've got a few friends who work at Nicolet, and it's just 30-40 minutes
from here. I visited a few months ago to pick up a
dead Microvax and
Vaxstation. In the same junk room, I saw an old Nicolet computer,
still
in use - although I don't remember the model number. There were racks
and racks of nine-track tapes, each containing spectra data from their
spectrographic analysis of thousands of substances. Most notable about
the Nicolet computers is the hard-wired Fourier routines that were only
recently out-paced by the 486/66.
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>