Today, if you want a computer for a particular task, you go shopping. But in the early days of computing, exotic applications needed custom computers. What’s more is that with the expense of computers, you likely got one made that fit exactly what you needed and no more. That led to many oddball one-off or nearly one-off computers during that time frame. Same for peripheral devices — you built what you had to and you left the rest on the drafting table. [Vintage Geek] got his hands on what appears to be one of them: the Gerber Scientific 6200.
While Gerber Scientific is still around, we’ve never heard of the 6200. Based on the serial number, we would guess at least 62 of them were made and this one has an interesting backstory of living in someone’s home who worked at the Pentagon. We presume the tapes were erased before it was sold!
Design-wise, it is pretty standard stuff. A 19-inch rack, a standard tape drive from Kennedy, a power supply, and some cards. The box takes 240 V, so the computer didn’t get powered up, but an examination of the inside looked like this really was a one-off with handwritten labels on masking tape.
We couldn’t tell for sure if the device was a computer itself, or just a tape drive and maybe plotter interface for another computer. If you know anything about this device, we are sure [Vintage Geek] would like to hear from you.
If this does turn out to have a CPU onboard, we’d bet it is bit sliced. If you have a 9-track tape machine, you may have to make your own tapes soon.
So, we have to wait until the next video to see what’s going on in the back, and maybe the inside.
I hope someone out there knows more about the machine.
Gerber eh? Probably used with the Gerbercutter, and probably involved with making precise cloth cuts for DoD uniforms and such. Same company that developed Gerber files. Early CAD/CAM. The name format means clearly pre-1978
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/economics-business-and-labor/businesses-and-occupations/gerber-scientific-inc#3480000043
Pen button. It’s plotter controller for doing photoplotting of circuit boards.
https://www.ednasia.com/A-lifetime-designing-PCBs–Switching-to-eCAD/
[img]https://www.edn.com/wp-content/uploads/contenteetimes-images-00pcb-evolvpcb2f4.jpg[/img]
can’t embed images eh? Gerber 400 Photoplotter
https://www.edn.com/wp-content/uploads/contenteetimes-images-00pcb-evolvpcb2f4.jpg
Wow!
You did your homework!
Thanks!
It’s an off-line plotter driver. It reads a tape written by a computer and operates the plotter. Early on, actual computer cycles were just too valuable to use on running something as slow as a plotter. Some software on a computer did the calculations and wrote what were probably “primitive” plotter commands onto a tape which was then stuck on this machine where it was read at the slower speed required by the plotter mechanics.
“Primitive” plotter commands means step up, step down, step right, step left, penup, pendown. There’s just not enough processing power there for this machine to know “draw a line”, “draw an arc”, or “print this text”. All of that was done on the actual computer.
Ever hear of Gerber files?
Hackaday comments did more research than a YouTuber, color me surprised. Also, this guy runs a museum? But he’s not able to run 240V to connect to the equipment he’s preserving? Or do minimal research?
There is such a thing as “playing dumb(ish) for engagement”