[inforoots] Philco computers

[Ray Gollub]

For anyone who still wants to know, this is a response to Bill Selmeier's 
request on January 23, 2005, for information on Philco's computers.

When I joined Philco in late 1957, their "computer lab" was working on a 
navy contract to provide a transistorized mainframe designated the "CXPQ". 
While this machine was delivered, I believe that it was never made 
operational, as the funding ran out.  However, Philco used this design to go 
into the scientific computer business.

The first machine was the model 210, using surface-barrier transistors, and 
designated "the transac s-2000".  It had a 48-bit word, two instructions per 
word.  Since the gold standard scientific computer at that time was the IBM 
709, a 36-bit vacuum tube machine, Philco's management expected to have a 
substantial technical advantage.  Other features of the system eventually 
developed included an eight-microsecond core storage,  tape transports using 
one-inch tape width, a high speed drum printer, and a peripheral subsytem 
for card-to-tape and tape-to-printer operations.

 The developers included many dedicated and brilliant people, a few of whom 
I'd like to mention.  The "father" of the mainframe design was James L. 
Maddox. The tape transport development was led by George Cogar, who later 
founded Mohawk Data Systems, the seminal key-to-tape system. The tape 
subsystem controller design was led by "Neil" Eldert.  The printer subsystem 
design was led by Monroe Postman and Harriet Bien.

Only a few model 210 systems were built, as faster transistors became 
available, and, at the suggestion of Professor Morris Rubinoff  (Ruby) of 
the University of Pennsylvania, the model 211 replaced the 210.  The 211 was 
the same mainframe with MADT (micro-alloy, diffused-base) transistor 
circuits substituted for the SBTs.  I think the improvement in speed was 
about fifty percent.

As for the claims of being asynchronous: It's true that these mainframes had 
no system clock, but, except for the adder, were not truly asynchronous. 
The timings for other mainframe operations were determined by the 
propagation time from one control state to the next.  If that period proved 
insufficient, pairs of inverters were inserted into the path.

These mainframes initially found good acceptance in the nuclear reactor 
design industry and at least one aircraft  manufacturer.  The users group 
was known as "TUG" (Transac User's Group), which refused to change the 
acronym when Philco stopped using "Transac" in favor of "Philco 2000" 
systems.

The basic programming tool was ALTAC, Philco's Fortran compiler.  The 
initial version of ALTAC, of course, had its share of bugs.  The revision, 
ALTAC II, was well accepted.  (Professor Saul Rosen consulted on programming 
matters, and Dr. Louis R. Lavine led the elite programming team.)

The competition, of course, was the IBM 7090, which seemed to have been 
rushed into existence on an accelerated schedule when the Philco machines 
appeared.  When the CDC 1604 showed up, that didn't help Philco either.

Early on, the need for faster core storage was evident.  A project was 
initiated to develop a two microsend memory.  Unfortunately, this project 
was badly mismanaged and eventually outsourced.

I think it was about 1960 when we started to work on the next model, the 
212.  While I was nominally in charge of that effort, and contributed some 
of the key decisions, the guiding mind clearly was that of a gentleman named 
Richard P. Brown, a recent hire.  IBM had announced the STRETCH system, in 
which the system was using look-ahead techniques to improve performance. 
Dick Brown borrowed from that idea and proposed a simplified architecture, 
using pre-fetch of instructions and a separate register to hold operands 
being stored, permitting the earlier execution of the next instruction.  The 
specifications on speed, using 8k modules of two microsecond memory, was 4x 
that of the 211.  This specification was met.

The three models, of course, were upward program-compatible.  I recall that 
the 212 incorporated some hardware enhancements affecting the programming 
which, if reflected in the code generated by ALTAC, would not, of course, 
run on the earlier machines.  I don't recall that this was ever an issue, 
since a simple specification in the compiler would generate appropriate code 
for the target system.

The competition for the 212 was the CDC 3600.  While the two machines, I 
think, were of comparable performance, and most of the pricing was 
comparable, CDC's memory was far cheaper, contributing to Philco's marketing 
problems.

After Ford bought Philco, and while the prototype 212s were being debugged, 
the computer division was put into the hands of Dean Wanlass, formerly, I 
believe, of Packard-Bell.   I left Philco in 1962 or 1963, after seeing the 
initial 212 accepted.  By that time, as may have been expected, Wanlass had 
filled many of the key positions, including those in engineering, with 
relatives and acquaintances.

In a post-departure interview at Philco corporate hq,  I was told in plain 
language that the computer division did not figure in Philco's long-term 
plans.  Although work at the computer division continued for another year or 
so, it was indeed closed out.

I would welcome any comments or corrections to this little piece of computer 
history.