rogues / Rare european machines

[Tore Sinding Bekkedal]

On Mon, 2006-12-04 at 01:01 -0800, Brent Hilpert wrote:
> Tore, thanks for your extensive reply about Norsk Data and the story about the
> CERN machines. I like hearing about the other minicomputers/companies - the
> 'rest of the world' - in addition to DEC and HP all the time.

It's a pleasure. Even here in Norway, too few people know about the
company and their machines, which I think is a real shame. AFAICT, all
Norwegian universities were heavily DEC, perhaps Oslo most of all (with
a DEC-10 or three) - and NORDs were mostly delegated to working as RJE
stations and text processing systems. CERN really was the only major
research institution to adopt them to the degree they did. ND quickly
shifted their focus towards business applications from the original
academic market, though the ND-500 was originally designed as a purely
scientific CPU!

One thing I forgot to mention is that one of the first three NORD-10
machines to be sold to CERN (and thus one of the first three NORD-10
sold), recently surfaced in a *barn* in Gjerdrum, not too far away from
Oslo (but still agricultural territory), and we are currently in the
process of restoring it.

> Yes, indeed(!), they were of the orange generation: even in the dim lighting and
> off to one side, the bank of them rather determined the colour scheme for the
> room. ('SCREAMING ORANGE' as you said in an earlier message. Orange panels with
> aluminum trim, IIRC.)

Yes. In fact CERN mounted handles on the panels, which certainly makes
the job of removing the panels a lot easier.

> They were from the 70's after all: the era of DEC purple, kitchen appliances
> in harvest-gold and avocado-green (for North Americans), and too many other
> design crimes. (Then again, this blue iMac in front of me may look horribly
> kitschy/garrish in another 20 years.)

You know, I love it. Anything but mindless good taste. At least they
look interesting, and diverse - much like their innards! The fascinating
differences between all these machines is a major part of what attracts
me to this hobby. Norsk Data machines didn't turn gray until around
1987, and that's when things started going downhill. However, as much as
I'd like to claim causality... :)

-Tore