His life reminds me of Thomas Edison..right place, right time..and hard work...and technology moved forward.
My understanding is that if he had been successful with the 8400, the Collins Radio Company would have been the IBM of the 70's.
His failure was right place, wrong time..resulting in no cash flow...and the Rockwell International corporation was there to pick up the pieces.
The tale I heard was that the 8400 was intended to be a message switching computer for routing telecommunications data, and based on what I recall of the hardware that is very likely so. The system emulated an IBM1401 using a microcode program so that it could be used for accounting, but the native OS was MPCS (Multi Program Control System). Under MPCS it could run multiple programs to do jobs like receive data to tape, send data from tape, and print data from tape simultaneously.
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The tale I heard was that the 8400 was intended to be a message switching computer for routing telecommunications data, and based on what I recall of the hardware that is very likely so. The system emulated an IBM1401 using a microcode program so that it could be used for accounting, but the native OS was MPCS (Multi Program Control System). Under MPCS it could run multiple programs to do jobs like receive data to tape, send data from tape, and print data from tape simultaneously.
That is just an old stereotype that only applies to a few of us.
Sorry wrong topic.