12 Nov
2009
12 Nov
'09
11:18 p.m.
Speaking of classic test equipment...
The circa-1970 GRI-99 minicomputer from GRI. What a bomb. I have to
wonder how many sold, and if any are left.
Was GRI an attempt by General Radio to get into the minicomputer fray?
--
Will
12 Nov
12 Nov
11:32 p.m.
Around that time ish they were also making a digital tester, Bug hound
GR2220, I wonder if that was born to fix their computer etc
Dave Caroline
On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 11:18 PM, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote:
Speaking of classic test equipment...
The circa-1970 GRI-99 minicomputer from GRI. What a bomb. I have to
wonder how many sold, and if any are left.
Was GRI an attempt by General Radio to get into the minicomputer fray?
--
Will
11:47 p.m.
GenRad made LOTS of very high-end automated board testers as well,
most of which were built around embedded Qbus PDP-11s. Many of them
are still in service; I have a friend who runs a tidy business
maintaining them.
-Dave
On Nov 12, 2009, at 6:32 PM, Dave Caroline wrote:
Around that time ish they were also making a digital
tester, Bug hound
GR2220, I wonder if that was born to fix their computer etc
Dave Caroline
On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 11:18 PM, William Donzelli
<wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote:
> Speaking of classic test equipment...
>
> The circa-1970 GRI-99 minicomputer from GRI. What a bomb. I have to
> wonder how many sold, and if any are left.
>
> Was GRI an attempt by General Radio to get into the minicomputer
> fray?
>
> --
> Will
>
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
13 Nov
13 Nov
1:27 a.m.
Anybody have a Genrad 6500 development system they'd like to trade or sell ?
Curt
Dave McGuire wrote:
GenRad made LOTS of very high-end automated board testers as well,
most of which were built around embedded Qbus PDP-11s. Many of them
are still in service; I have a friend who runs a tidy business
maintaining them.
-Dave
On Nov 12, 2009, at 6:32 PM, Dave Caroline wrote:
Around that time ish they were also making a
digital tester, Bug hound
GR2220, I wonder if that was born to fix their computer etc
Dave Caroline
On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 11:18 PM, William Donzelli
<wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote:
> Speaking of classic test equipment...
>
> The circa-1970 GRI-99 minicomputer from GRI. What a bomb. I have to
> wonder how many sold, and if any are left.
>
> Was GRI an attempt by General Radio to get into the minicomputer fray?
>
> --
> Will
>
3:30 a.m.
Hi Al,
Thanks for the heads up and info....
Curt
Al Kossow wrote:
Curt @ Atari Museum wrote:
Anybody have a Genrad 6500 development system
they'd like to trade or
sell ?
The 6500 development system was designed by a company called Datakit.
Home-grown
OS, and hard sectored floppies, as I recall.
12 Nov
12 Nov
11:44 p.m.
On 12 Nov 2009 at 18:18, William Donzelli wrote:
Speaking of classic test equipment...
The circa-1970 GRI-99 minicomputer from GRI. What a bomb. I have to
wonder how many sold, and if any are left.
Was GRI an attempt by General Radio to get into the minicomputer fray?
GRI--Newton, Mass--I thought, was a firm not affiliated with anyone.
They were noted for creating a very inexpensive MOVE architecture
machine. I don't know what became of them (i.e. who swallowed them).
Curious machines.
--Chuck
13 Nov
13 Nov
12:10 a.m.
GRI--Newton, Mass--I thought, was a firm not
affiliated with anyone.
The advert in an old Datamation has the fine print "part of GR Industries".
GenRad at the time was an almost sunken ship (there is such a thing as
being too conservative in the test equipment market!), and I have to
think it was a mad attempt to bail out the water.
--
Will
2:17 a.m.
On 12 Nov 2009 at 19:10, William Donzelli wrote:
Will, I think it's the wrong "GR", but an interesting story. From
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/arch/risc/
"Sidenote: Saul Dinman explained in 2003 that GRI was originally
General Research Corporation, a private Massachussetts company; when
it went public, it had name conflicts with a pre-existing General
Research, and then with General Radio as it hunted for a non-
conflicting name. Under the name GRI, the company was eventually
acquired by venture capitalists in North Carolina, and then by a
display manufacturer that wanted to buy their OEM supplier, and
finally by Analog Devices. The GRI processor architecture was one of
the first bus-oriented architectures built using a printed-circuit
backplane. Thousands of GRI-909 systems were sold on an OEM basis,
mostly in the industrial control sector. Had marketing and
capitalization worked out differently, the GRI-909 might have been an
effective competitor for the Data General Nova, another DEC spinoff."
So I guess that any remnants of GRI might be in AD's archives...
Cheers,
Chuck
GRI--Newton,
Mass--I thought, was a firm not affiliated with anyone.
The advert in an old Datamation has the fine print "part of GR
Industries".
GenRad at the time was an almost sunken ship (there is such a thing as
being too conservative in the test equipment market!), and I have to
think it was a mad attempt to bail out the water.
3:21 a.m.
No, it was a company started by Saul Denman after he
left DEC. Saul
came up with the PDP-8/S
Did some GRI stuff turn up?
Nope, just some old Datamations with the advert.
I find it interesting that the ad does not make it clear at all that
the company is or is not associated with GenRad.
--
Will
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