General Automation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
GA General Automation was an American company, founded in 1968 by Burt Yale and Larry Goshorn[1] (a former marketing executive and a salesman from Honeywell), which manufactured minicomputers and industrial controllers. General Automation was originally located in Orange, California. In the late 1970s, GA relocated to Anaheim, California.
| |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1968 |
| Headquarters | Anaheim, California |
Key people | Larry Goshorn and Burt Yale, co-founders |
| Products | Minicomputers |
In 1971, Ray Noorda, the future CEO of Novell, joined GA as executive vice-president. In 1971 General Automation increased its sales to $10.6 million and showed its first profit of $3,000. In 1972, sales increased to $16 million with net income of $1.56 million. By 1973 sales jumped to $30.4 million.[2]
In 1990, GA reported a loss of $221,000 on revenues of $39,248,000.
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.[3]
By 2002, General Automation was doing business under the name GA eXpress, Inc. In 2003, GA eXpress filed a Form 8-K with the SEC stating it would go into receivership.[4]
Products
- SPC-12[5] (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
- SPC-8 (Nov 1968)[6][7][8]
- GA 18/30 (June 1968, IBM 1800 and IBM 1130-compatible)[9]
- SPC-16/30, /50 & /70 (November 1971)[10]
- SPC-16/40, /45, /65 & /85 (January 1972)[11]
- LSI-12/16 (January 1974)[12]
- These computers were initially produced with silicon on sapphire circuit technology provided by Rockwell International[13][14] but yield problems caused a switch to conventional ICs by 1975.[15]
- GA 16/110 and 16/120 (December 1976)[16]
- GA 16/220 (July 1978)
- GA 16/330
- GA 16/440
- GA 16/460
- GA Zebra 1700/1750[18]
- Introduced in 1985, a Motorola 68000 computer running Xenix or Pick Operating System
- Parallel Computers, Inc. – fault-tolerant supermicro/minicomputer based on Unix, acquired 1987, sold 1988[19]