Talk:General Automation

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Origin of the microprocessor in 16/110 and 16/120

I am trying to flesh-out the products section of the GA article. Like Digital Equipment Corporation in 1975, GA was attempting to convert their minicomputers to microcomputers. GA had already tried to microprocessorize their 12-bit offerings with the 12-bit LSI-12/16 in 1974 but gave up because Rockwell could not get enough yield to supply the parts.

In December 1976, the GA 16/110 and 16/120 are described by Computerworld as "Mini Maker Offering Micro." Is the 16/110 really a micro? Fortunately, the GA 16/110 is reasonably-well documented on Bitsavers. It has the instruction set of GA's SPC-16 line of 16-bit computers. In the maintenance manual at Bitsavers, I can see that this computer really has a microprocessor in two 48-pin DIPs. The two packages are described as CROM (control ROM) and RALU (register-ALU). The RALU has at least sixteen 16-bit registers in it and the CROM has 320 words of 34 bits. It seems like the two chips are configured like the Western Digital MCP-1600 processor used in the DEC LSI-11, another microcoded multi-chip design. "Mini Maker Offering Micro" hints that Synertek might be the source of these chips but other sources seem to indicate that Synertec only second-sourced processors but did not design them. Can anybody identify this microprocessor? UPDATE: I found a color picture of the CPU board on ebay. The CROM is blank but the RALU has a Synertek logo and the numbers 266A02. Still mysterious. RastaKins (talk) 16:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]