Arcturus Minicomputer - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

29 Mar 2012

*Dear Rod,*
**
*Feeling nostaligic, I googled 'Arcturus Minicomputer', and your letter
below was the only reference I found. I know the letter is from 2007. I
hope the email address is still in use.*
**
*I programmed an Arcturus minicomputer at the Atkinson Morley Hospital in
Wimbledon from 1973 to 1976. It was used to do image processing on pictures
...
 from the first CT scanner in the world, which was
located in that hospital.* **
*All the programming I did on the machine was in assembler. The computer
did not have a disk operating system. Every action involved first loading
the program you need from paper tape, then the data, etc.*
**
*The first thing I did was to write a very rudimentary disk operating
system. It took 6 weeks, but it worked.*
**
*I knew that Arcturus had installed the monitor system in Gatwick.*
**
*Best Wishes,*
**
**
*Jon Griver*
**
**
**
*Fri Mar 30 02:45:49 CDT 2007*

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------------------------------

Hi All
         Whilst sitting on the plane on the way back from Newcastle
yesterday. It reminded me of a system I saw at Gatwick airport in the
early 1970's. I'm pretty sure it was run by a mini computer called an
'Arcturus'. I can clearly remember the grey rack mounted box with its
row of toggle switches and lamps. I was there to install a VDU
(sometimes referred to as a glass teletype). The big teletype they drove
it from made the whole place shake and the VDU I fitted of course did
not.

It drove the departure / arrival TV monitors.  The way it generated the
characters was curious to say the least. It had a large number of
circuits which  generated parts of characters. One did a vertical bar,
another produced a whole circle whilst others output parts of a circle,
forty-five degree bars and so on. For each character cell the component
parts of the required character were selected summed and added to a TV
raster. Does anybody remember the Arcturus?

Rod Smallwood