Today, if you want a computer for a specific task, you go shopping. But in the early days of computing, you needed a custom computer for a specialized application. Plus, computers were expensive, so you were likely to only be able to build what you needed, and nothing more. As a result, there were a lot of exotic one-off or nearly one-off computers made during that period. The same was true for peripherals: only what you needed was built, and the rest was left on the drawing board. [Vintage Geek] He got hold of a Gerber Scientific 6200 which appears to be one of them.
Gerber Scientific still exists today, but I’ve never heard of the 6200. Judging by the serial numbers, I believe at least 62 were made. This one has an interesting backstory in that it was kept in the home of someone who worked at the Pentagon. I believe the tapes were erased before it was sold.
Design-wise it’s pretty standard: a 19″ rack, a standard Kennedy tape drive, a power supply, and a few cards. The box uses 240V so the computer wouldn’t power up, but looking inside I could see it was something really special, with hand-written labels on masking tape.
I was not able to determine if this device was the computer itself, or if it was a tape drive and plotter interface for another computer. If you know anything about this device, please let me know. [Vintage Geek] Please let us know what you think.
If it turns out to have a CPU, it must be bitsliced.If you have a 9-track tape machine, you might need to make your own tapes soon.
