Information on Collins Radio 8311 Processor/Computer

Here!

Collins Radio Co/C-8311A-1/USA//1967/IC Jan71 is the specification.

You looking for the C-system?

The "C system" caused the demise of Collins Radio. Arthur Collins, lost the company because of this development. It predates my tenure there. Story was he spent so much on it's development that he leveraged the company assets to where he could not make payroll. Rockwell International stepped in ~1972, and gave a loan for 51% share of company ($14million). Within 6 weeks he left as Rockwell shut the monies down on C system (and any control he had). It was a mainframe computer system intended to be sold to airline carriers for booking of flights and general airline data use. But pretty tough to compete with IBM/Sperry/Digital. It was packaged as ATR 'black boxes' in 19" rack mount cabinets. It had many advanced processing ideas given the pre micro processor era.

I may have some of this wrong as I started work there in 1984.

I've never heard of the 8311 product.

GA for you! I will be following up with the U of Iowa on the documents given to the school by Arthur Collin's widow.

The 8311 had 8k of RAM and cost $13,000 circa 1970. It was in an ATR package about the size of a loaf of bread and used a cassette tape to load the program. The only operator interface was via Teletype machine. I was a young Collins engineer working on an experimental ATC system for the FAA that used the 8311 to track airplanes and tune ground radios. I did program the 8311, and think it involved punch cards and compiling on a mainframe to produce the cassette tape.

Art Collins would roam the labs. I was working on a big transmitter and this old guy stuck his head in and asked how it was going. Later I found out who he was.