General Automation Explained

General Automation, Inc.
Foundation:	1968
Key People:	Larry Goshorn, co-founder
Products:	Minicomputers

GA General Automation was an American company, founded in 1968 by Larry Goshorn (a former marketing executive and a salesman from Honeywell), which manufactured minicomputers and industrial controllers.

In 1994, General Automation announced it would be relocating from Anaheim to Irvine. It announced it would be phasing-out its manufacturing operations but would retain its 50 employees.^[1]

Products

• GA SPC-12^[2] (Jan 1968)

• Priced at $6400 and claiming $4,000 worth of free options

• Totally integrated, binary, parallel, single-address processor

• 8-bit data and 12-bit address

• 4,096 words (8-bit bytes) of memory with a 2.2 microsecond cycle time

• Shared command concept that permits the SPC-12s 8-bit memory to handle 12-bit instructions.

• Features included a real-time clock, expandable memory to 16K, a teletype interface, a control panel and a priority interrupt
• GA SPC-8 (Nov 1968)^{[3] [4] [5]}
• GA 18/30 (June 1968, IBM 1800-compatible)^[6]
• GA SPC-16/30, /50 & /70 (November 1971)^[7]
• GA SPC-16/40, /45, /65 & /85 (January 1972)^[8]
• LSI-12/16 (January 1974)^[9]

These computers were initially produced with silicon on sapphire circuit technology provided by Rockwell International^{[10] [11]} but yield problems caused a switch to conventional ICs by 1975.^[12]

• GA 16/110 & /120 (December 1976)^[13]
• GA 16/220 (July 1978)
• GA 16/330
• GA 16/440
• GA 16/460
• GA Zebra 1700/1750 (Introduced in 1985, a Motorola 68000 computer running Pick Operating System)
• Parallel Computers, Inc. – fault-tolerant supermicro/minicomputer based on Unix, acquired 1987, sold 1988^[14]

External links

• Computer History Museum
• Documents at Bitsavers
• 18/30 Fortran IV Software Data Sheet

Notes and References

1. News: General Automation Inc.: The company said Tuesday... . 5 July 2023 . Los Angeles Times . November 30, 1994.
2. Datamation, September 1968, p. 137
3. Low Cost Computer Has 4K Memory . Computerworld . 25 Sep 1968 . 2 . 39 . 7 .
4. Across the Editor's Desk - Computing and Data Processing Newsletter: SPC-8, A NEW GENERAL PURPOSE COMPUTER FROM GENERAL AUTOMATION, INC. . Computers and Automation . Oct 1968 . 60 .
5. Book: SPC-8 general purpose computer . 1968 . General Automation, Inc. . english.
6. Datamation, May 1969, p. 136
7. Datamation, November 15, 1971, p. 112
8. Datamation, January 1972, p. 5
9. Datamation, January 1974, p. 105
10. Rockwell Cancels SOS uC . Microcomputer Digest . January 1975 . 1 . 7 . 1, 4 . 11 January 2023.
11. Datamation, January 1974, p. 105
12. Datamation, January 1975, p. 18
13. • Web site: Mini Maker Offering Micro . December 6, 1976 . March 7, 2019.
14. News: Parallel Computer Acquired 16 Months Ago: General Automation to Sell Money-Losing Subsidiary . David . Olmos . Los Angeles Times . August 3, 1988.