Elliott Automation Driver board from the Arch 1000 Computer

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This PCB was listed as a 'mystery item' on our website, with users encouraged to provide information.  The following is a summary of the info provided:

We received the following from Peter Moores:

I have worked on this type of board some years back and it looks like a driver board from an Elliott Automation Arch 1000. The reason I believe this is that the predecessor system the 803 and 803b had encapsulated AND OR gate logic in an item called a Minilog i.e. a logic brick. These never had transistors in but the Arch 1000 (if I remember correctly) had the same logic brick layouts with up to sixteen connections but un-encapsulated and had the first germanium transistors

We are grateful to Peter Moores for this information

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"As a student I had the chance to work at a retired Elliott Arch 1000 process control computer (1971).

It had 8k of 18 bit wide core memory, 1 accumulator (today we call it register), an instruction set of 13 instructions (an early risc computer).

It had a very simple operating system (monitor), hard wired by a diode matrix (less than 100 instructions):

It checked 4 switches of the switch register in order to
* jump to routine A

* jump to routine B

* execute a binary loader

* ??don’t remember??

The Arch 1000 was used for continued control in a production plant in chemical industry, I have no further details.

The boards I remember were larger in size, (higher) than shown in (Driver Board).

They had encapsulated Minilog circuts (mainly containing 2 NAND gates with 4 inputs and an extension input, with one germanium transistor for each gate).
The minilogs were mechanically fixed by solder balls, and connected by wires (no printed circuits)."

From Werner Uelpenich 

Date : 1962

Manufacturer : Elliott

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH15537. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.
 

Scan of Document: Elliott Automation Driver board from the Arch 1000 Computer

Click on the Image For Detail






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