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Further reading ⇓

□ Overview □ Project
GEC
□ Overview □ 4000 Series □ GEC 4070 Operating System □ Installation □ Communications □ GEC 4000 family □ Nucleus □ Functional spec. □ Babbage assembler □ Instruction set manual □ Nucleus manual
Prime
□ Overview □ The company □ Primos Operating System □ Systems □ Communications □ Software □ Prime and UMIST □ Office Automation □ The Schools Project □ Prime 750 □ FOREST preprocessor □ META II TWS □ META II definition □ FINGS graphics system □ ROOTS extended FORTRAN □ Prime User Manual

ICF GEC Computers

Paul Bryant organising the GEC 4070 acceptance benchmarking. From L to R: Graham Robinson, Dave Toll, Eric Thomas (back view), Dale Sutcliffe and Len Ford (behind the flowers), Richard Hilken, Bob Hopgood, David Duce, Paul Bryant and somebody from GEC. Note the British Union Jack flying.

Paul Bryant organising the GEC 4070 acceptance benchmarking. From L to R: Graham Robinson, Dave Toll, Eric Thomas (back view), Dale Sutcliffe and Len Ford (behind the flowers), Richard Hilken, Bob Hopgood, David Duce, Paul Bryant and somebody from GEC. Note the British Union Jack flying.
Full image ⇗
© UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council

The GEC 4070 was delivered to RAL in the Spring of 1977 and passed its acceptance on 14 April 1977. The initial configuration was:

The machine was less powerful than the PRIME 400 but performed well interactively when the workload was not over-demanding. In consequence, the decision was made to install GEC systems in less demanding ones. As the engineers were taking a while to get up to speed in terms of interactive computing, most of the early systems installed by the ICF were GEC systems. RAL already had a great deal of expertise in GEC systems which also meant the ability to support them was available sooner.

These pages give some of the history of the involvement with GEC. The last ECN Newsletter has articles by Paul Bryant with regard to GECs and communications.

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