I love old programmables, but this?

[robve]

I'm in awe, but also feel disgust at the yellow wart on top, and the sheer size of this thing!

Saw it on flea bay, a desktop programmable from 1972 (not a picture from the bay):



Bay listing (I have no affiliation with the seller):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225499918956?ch...1&mkcid=28
Includes a set of magnetic disks and "Special Products - Systems for Business and Science" manuals "Surveying Library", "Statistics", "Subroutines", and one more. Must have cost a small fortune in 1972.

Info on the Sharp Compet 365p on the CalcMuseum with pictures.

Sharp also made an earlier Compet 363p model in 1971 (same as the Burroughs C3660 also made by Sharp apparently). This is the same year the Intel 4004 was released on the market, but I doubt these Sharps use the 4004, very likely custom LSI (i.e. ELSI) made by Rockwell.

These programmable machines had branching instructions and tags (labels) for loops and conditional control flow, which must have been revolutionary, or was it? Someone could program the N-Queens benchmark on one of these.

- Rob

EDIT: fix funny typo