Rolm Computers: 1602, 1602A, 1602B, 1666, MSExx (was Data General Nova Star Trek)

[Erik Baigar]

On Tue, 26 Apr 2016, William Donzelli wrote:

>> On the world there is probably only my 12 bit freely programmable
>> Elliott 900 still alive, I know of as little as 6 Rolms (privately
>> owned, all variants) and less than 5 of the inertial navigators.
>
> If you are talking about the various Rolm 1600 series machines - there are
> a whole lot more of those out there. I had 12 of them in stock maybe ten
> years ago, and sold my last one last year. And about five years ago, I
> moved a few more for a client.

Well - "are out there" I agree, but do you know of any PRIVATELY
owned and ALIVE machines? There is lot of PDP* discussion here, but
it is very hard to get in touch with people being working on
Rolm stuff. Of course: In contrast to a non-working PDP8 (which
still looks beautiful) a defunc Rolm processor is just a very
heavy brick of metal.

So any one out there also preserving Rolm computer hardware in
working condition?

> There are also a bunch still in service at the paper mills.

...and some airborne and land based MIL applications I am
    pretty sure...

Did you also have some later Rolm machines (like MSE14?) or
any interesting software (apart from the diagnostics)?

Have you heared of the Micro Code development system for
the 1602 (no -A or -B)? I have got one of these, reverse
engineered it partly and rebuilt the missing panel...

    http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/EB-HDDsim-on-1602-w-Microcoder.jpg

...but it is still not working and of course I am missing the
Micro Code assembler...

    Have a good time,

       Erik.