Litton Industries Monrobot XI computers available

Vintage Computer Festival wrote: Perhaps putting the cart before the horse, but I think the reason the -8 is considerd the first "minicomputer" is the sheer number sold. As has already been mentioned similar machines existed before with somehat similar performance or price points but the -8 realy caught on and that is what is remembered. Who can recall the story of the coining of the term "minicomputer"? Here in France we had a machine very similar to the Monrobot XI, it was called the CAB 500. Just the other day I was talking to someone who, for his PhD thesis project, interfaced that machine to a physics experiment. The CAB 500 was a drum based machine, and very interesting. It had a language called PAF which is extremely reminiscient of BASIC despite being some 5 years earlier. Unlike BASIC, PAF was designed so that its key words could be easily changed to different languages and on the fly during one progam, a feature I have not seen in any other language. For french reading members see : http://www.aconit.org/hbp/CAB500 we are continuing to develop that site as new information appears. -- hbp