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TheMonroe Calculating Machine Mark XI (orMonrobot XI) was a general-purposestored-programelectronic digital computer introduced in 1960 by theMonroe Calculating Machine Division ofLitton Industries. The system was marketed for "primarily for billing, and invoice writing", but could also be used for low-end scientific computing.[1][2]: 6B (24)
The computer had an unusual architecture, in that all data flowed through a central spinning drum magnetic memory. This enabled a low hardware cost, with the tradeoff of low-speed performance. The machine was marketed as an entry-level computer suitable for small businesses.
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Upon introduction in May 1960,[3] the Monrobot XI sold for$24,500. Monroe also marketed other computer systems in the family, such as the Monrobot IX and Monrobot MU, but the Monrobot XI appeared to be the most popular model.[1]
In March 1961, theUnited States Army reported[4] that seven units had been made. In November 1961, the price remained unchanged and leasing was $700 per month.[5]
By 1966, there were about 350 machines in the field. In 2013, no machines were believed to remain in existence.[6] However, in 2021, a collector in North Carolina revealed that he owns half a dozen complete Monrobots, along with ancillary items, manuals, and tape programs.[citation needed]
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The bare-bones Monrobot XI resembled an ordinary steel desk in length, breadth, and height, surmounted by an ordinary typewriter and a breadbox-sized control panel with indicator lights and switches. A paper tape reader and punch were the only machine-readable data media peripherals on the base configuration.[1] At a weight of 375 pounds (170 kg),[4][2]: 6B (24) its purveyors pronounced it "portable".[7] It could operate outside of anair-conditioned room tolerating ±25% voltage margins at anambient temperature of 110 °F (43 °C) using a conventional mains power line (15A, 110V, 60c.p.s. service) and about half as much electrical power (850 W) as atoaster.[7][2]: 6B (24)
Unlike virtually all electronic digital computers ever built, as an early[3] machine, the Monrobot XI was one of the small family of computers which totally lackedrandom-access memory (RAM), an alternative technology which would have allowed it to access all memory words equally rapidly. Even at the time it was introduced, it was not rare for electronic digital computers to usemagnetic-core memory for RAM; the price (perbit) of which would eventually fall[8] from over $1 in the early 1950s to about $0.20 by the mid-1960s.
Instead, to keep the cost of the machine very low, the Monorobot XI used a form of memory in which words were only periodically accessible in sequential order, via an electromechanical moving device calledmagnetic drum memory.Thus, physically it bore some resemblance to the theoreticalTuring machine of computer science, albeit with the idealized data tape being of finite length and joined end-to-end, and then finally replicated 32 times in parallel.[citation needed] The longlatency of memory access, which followed from exclusive reliance on a macroscopic moving part, made the Monrobot XI operate very slowly,[vague] despite the use of non-mechanical electronics for logical functions.
The Monorobot XI might best be thought of as a modernized (solid-state), low cost version of theIBM 650, which had been the world's first mass-produced computer. The IBM 650 was leased at $3,250 per month[9] and approximately 800 were made between 1954 and 1958. By 1962, a total of 2,000 computers were in existence. Both the IBM 650 and Monrobot XI used a magnetic drum for primary memory, but the former usedvacuum tubes andbi-quinary coding (rather than transistors and binary coding) for its electronics.
All input and output was performed one character at a time, under direct program control. Only one input device could be active at a time, but one to three output devices could operate simultaneously in synchronization.[10]: 35
The Monrobot XI's rewritable, persistent ("nonvolatile") memory consisted of a rotating magnetic drum storing 1,024 words of 32bits, each of which could record either a singleinteger, or a pair of zero- or single-address instructions. The average access time of 6milliseconds (ms) derived from the fact that the drum made a full rotation every 11.7 ms (spinning at 5,124rpm).[10]: 10 Even the 8 "high-speed" registers of thecentral processing unit (CPU) physically resided on the drum in two dedicated tracks, but by being replicated 16 times (with 16 times as manyread/write heads distributed around the drum periphery), they could be read or written 16 times as fast as the bulk of persistent memory.[10]: 12
The whine of the drum could easily be heard, as it continuously spun for as long as the machine was powered up. Aperforated metal screen at the side or back of the cabinet could be removed, affording a direct view of the reddish-browniron oxide-coated drum, surrounded by multiple stationary magnetic read/write heads. There was no special provision for protection fromdust, as the magnetic heads were rigidly mounted at fixed distances from the magnetic surface, and did not use "flying head" technology. The diameter of the drum was approximately 6 inches (150 mm).
Except forneon lamps in the control panel and 10 to 30 blue-greenelectroluminescent lampvacuum tubes employed for output displays in later versions, the electronics used only discrete solid-state components, including 383transistors (mostly 2N412) and 2,300diodes (mostly 1N636).[1] The arithmetic unit alone used 190 transistors and 1,675 diodes.[1] This astoundingly small active component count (383) – little more than in theManchester Baby (250), the world's first stored-programTuring-complete computer produced in 1948 – contrasts starkly with the many billions of transistors present in modernmicroprocessors used in handheldcellphones. The low component count was a key benefit of its slow electromechanical memory, which exploited synchronization with a spinning drum's rotational angle, rather than adding electronic switches, to accomplishmultiplexing of bits. For comparison, even Intel's first (1971) microprocessor, the four-bitIntel 4004, required about 2,300 transistors in its monolithic design.
Construction used pluggable printedcircuit boards, allowing partial replacement of a defective module as the principal means of repair. This continued an electronics construction tradition pioneered when the relatively unreliablevacuum tubes had been used as active components, prior to the advance to more moderntransistors used in the Monorobot XI. Unlike vacuum tubes, which were always plugged into sockets, discrete transistors were often permanentlysoldered into place.
The arithmetic unit performed computations using thebinary number system, with machine-language programming usinghexadecimal digits (called "sexadecimal" in the programmer's manual),[10]: 3 and employing the unusual character set of {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,S,T,U,V,W,X}.[10]: 3 Addition of 32-bit fixed-point integers required 3 to 9milliseconds (ms), andmultiplication required 28 ms to 34 ms. The longer durations reflected the mean latency (6 ms) of accessing a persistent memory location, rather than a register, to retrieve the second of the twooperands.[1]
Division (500 ms) and more-advancedfloating-point functions were implemented in software.[1] Advanced built-in mathematical functions includedsquare root,logarithm, andantilogarithm (on both decimal andnatural bases), plustrigonometric functions (indegrees or inradians). A total of 27 machineopcode instructions were defined. Addressing the 1,023-word memory was allocated 10 bits.[10]: 88 An optional 2,048-word drum could be installed, and addressed via two extra address bits.[10]: 88 The system was in many ways presented as an advanced programmable calculator, in keeping with the heritage of its manufacturer. Simple subroutine calls and returns were supported, as was autoincrement of operands.
Thesystem clock and all timings were synchronized with the rotation of the storage drum, since all data flow passed onto or off of its central data store.[10]: 12, 72 [2]: 6B (24) Programs could be hand-optimized for maximum speed by carefully considering the timing of the drum rotation and the physical location of instructions and data.[10]: 72–74
The computer could be programmed using anassembly language system called QUIKOMP, but its simple machine language instruction set and slow operation speed encouraged many programmers to code directly in numeric opcodes. Areference card was available to help in remembering the numeric opcodes and data codes.Bits were idiosyncraticallynumbered on the control panel from 16 (MSB, leftmost) down to 1 (LSB, rightmost), although the programmer's manual numbered them from 15 to 0 in a more standard manner.[10]: 2, 6
The minimalloader program had no provisions to support multiple users on a single machine. To accommodate multiple users economically, time-consuming manualdata entry could be performed offline, by use of several separate key-to-punchpaper tape machines (called "add-punch" machines), whose numeric-only keyboards were slightly-modified versions of mechanical desk calculators. Because the mechanical calculator-style keyboards could only generatedecimal (base-10) codes, the numerical opcodes were specified in decimal, even though the actual processing was in binary.
Editing and copying of punched tapes was also possible offline, and tapes could be spliced using special adhesive tape and alignmentJigs. Experienced programmers soon learned to read the numeric codes visually from the punched paper tapes. When an "add-punch" tape had been proofread and corrected, it was ready for loading via a paper tape reader into the Monrobot XI for execution and debugging.
Theconsole terminal typically was a modified IBM typewriter. An option was a heavy-dutyFlexowriter, which rattled and shook the entire machine, especially when the heavy carriage forcefully returned to the beginning of a new print line. Output was via printed paper typed by the typeprinter, or punched oiled paper tape. An 80-columnpunched card reader/punch could optionally be added to the base configuration.
A single 16-bit register could be displayed on the control panel, primarily for troubleshooting or diagnostic purposes.[10]: 62–65 The control panel could also be used to single-step, halt, or start the processor, for debugging or troubleshooting.[10]: 70 There were also provisions for connection of anoscilloscope for more advanced technical troubleshooting.[10]: 70
Eight different control panel "sense switches" could be used to enter simple data into a running program, or to select different modes of program operation under control of software.[10]: 53–55
Anepisode of the animated television seriesFuturama, originally airing in 2001, featured a humanoid robot resembling mid-20th century sex symbolMarilyn Monroe, named "Marilyn Monrobot", as a character within a film viewed by the episode cast.