website/content/museum/litton-monroe-oc-8820.md

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
Litton - Monroe OC-8820	Computers	Professional Computer	U.S.A.	1982	Z80	name image company company_name specs tabs photos adverts hardware comments oc_id source OC-8820 /media/museum/photos/monroe_8820_system_s2.jpg /companies/litton-monroe Litton - Monroe label value NAME OC-8820 label value MANUFACTURER Litton - Monroe label value TYPE Professional Computer label value ORIGIN U.S.A. label value YEAR 1982 label value BUILT IN LANGUAGE The Monroe BASIC was an extended version of the BASIC used in the Luxor ABC80/ABC800 computers. label value KEYBOARD Typewriter type, 93 keys with numeric keypad & function keys label value CPU Z80 label value SPEED Unknown label value RAM 128 to 256 KB label value VRAM 16 KB label value ROM Unknown label value TEXT MODES 80 columns x 25 lines label value GRAPHIC MODES None label value COLORS Monochrome amber label value SOUND Unknown label value SIZE / WEIGHT Unknown label value I/O PORTS 1 parallel and 1 serial port label value BUILT IN MEDIA 2 x 300 KB 5.25 floppy-disk drives label value OS Proprietary Monroe OS called OS8MT (MT for multi-tasking), CP/M label value POWER SUPPLY Built-in PSU label value PERIPHERALS 10 MB hard-disk unit label value PRICE about $3,000 photos adverts hardware title subtitle text image FRONT VIEW Thanks to **Chris Kelepouris** /media/museum/photos/monroe_8820_system_s1.jpg title subtitle text image KEYBOARD CLOSE-UP Thanks to **Bob Heptig** for all the following pictures. /media/museum/photos/monroe_8820_keyboard_s1.jpg title subtitle text image OPENED #1 /media/museum/photos/monroe_8820_inside_s1.jpg title subtitle text image OPENED #2 /media/museum/photos/monroe_8820_opened_s1.jpg title subtitle text image INSIDE Main board and FDD controller card. /media/museum/photos/monroe_8820_electronics_s1.jpg title subtitle text image MONROE ORIGINAL DISKETTES /media/museum/photos/monroe_8820_diskettes_s1.jpg title subtitle text image MONROE ADVERT, FEB. 1983 /media/museum/pubs/monroe_8820_pub0283_s1.jpg title subtitle text image 10 MB HDD UNIT Thanks to **Chris Kelepouris**, the proud owner of an OC-8820 /media/museum/hardware/monroe_8820_hddunit_s1.jpg title subtitle text image INSIDE THE HDD UNIT /media/museum/hardware/monroe_8820_hddunit_s2.jpg author date text GregUnit (Charleston, SC) Wednesday 20th July 2011 In ''83 I used to sell and install Monroe OC-8800 computers. They had the 8810 with 2 floppy drives and the 8820 originally came with a 5 meg full height hard drive. Units were manufactured in Lexington, SC, a Monroe owed assembly plant that operated at 50 degrees with the lights off (robotics). My first sale was to Woody Bilton Ford in St. George, SC. A company in Litchfield SC had a great auto dealer F$I package. The bought the 8810 with a Diablo daisy wheel printer. My next sale was to C$S Bank (now Wachovia (Wells Fargo)). Again, another F$I package with the Diablo printer, Word Star, D-Base, and Supercalc. Monroe also had a Tobacco package that would print the purchase order (oki dot printer) and the check (Diablo) at the same time. Sold like hotcakes. The following year Monroe came out with an 80186 processor machine with “Open Office” by Software Products International”. Open Office did everything MS Office did, but better. Office 2000 was about the same. I sold the fool out of that one too. But IBM came out with the 80286, Monroe bet the farm on 80186, and that was the end of Monroe computers. However. Monroe did a great job of making computers useful for business. author date text Bill Thane (United States) Friday 9th April 2021 Actually the OC8820 was a dual drive. The 5MB drive which was either a Mini Scribe or Seagate was detached and had a lead shielded cable that weighed a ton. I want to say the 8810 was a single drive. I worked out of the San Carlos and then San Francisco office for several years for Monroe and sold a number of those systems. The DB software was Condor and the spreadsheet software was Supercalc and of course the word processing was Wordstar. author date text Alejandro (Argentina) Thursday 18th March 2021 Hi everyone! I''m repairing a Monroe MCA200, which is similar to the OC8820. I have thought that they are the same machine, but after an analysis of the pictures that I have found here, I see several differences in the mainboard. I have uploaded a BIOS dump here https://archive.org/details/monroe_mca200. Any questions or comments are welcome, regards! author date text Ted (Usa) Thursday 9th January 2020 As a foreign student (Argentina) in 1982 I trained police department administration at Institute of Police traffic Management in Jacksonville, Florida using Monroe 8820 and DBASE. They used it to track stolen property. I was hired in 1983 by Litton/Monroe as salesman, I was the only one selling this system from a team of 7 that sold the old accounting systems. I was the only user of the 20 APPLE IIC in the auniversity and found the Monroe 8820 to be more business oriented with the three applications DBASE, WORDSTAR, VISICALC. author date text Alejandro (Argentina) Tuesday 26th November 2019 Hi everyone, good morning! I have found a variant of this machine, a Monroe MCA200 that has been made in Argentina. Anyone did have success to find manuals or any extra information about OC8820? I have found several notes in magazines of their period, but nothing with technical data about their internals or usage. author date text Francesco Nidito (Italy) Tuesday 21st August 2018 @Gordon $ I own one OC-8820 but that seems to have problems at start up. Taking a look to the manuals could help. Any change to be able to get a scan of them? Please write me at francesco $dot$ nidito $at$ gmail $dot$ com author date text Chris C (Phila, PA ) Monday 16th December 2013 Wow what a time warp! I sold about 15 of these computers in 1982 and 1983. I remember one of the Sales guys decided to develop a Dungeons and Dragons game in Basic after hours because otherwise this pc only had a few business applications. btw$ SuperCalc was the spreadsheet program available. Morristown Branch! Where are all you guys now? Mark Ricciardi, Kevin Haney, Steve Shustak, Tom Corzine, Gary, Joe, Martha. Good times! author date text Gordon Warnock (United Kingdom) Wednesday 1st February 2012 I have a working OC 8820 with a 5 meg hard drive, along with all the manuals and programmers manuals and original disks. author date text Gordon Warnock (United Kingdom) Wednesday 1st February 2012 I have a working OC 8820 with a 5 meg hard drive, along with all the manuals and programmers manuals and original disks. author date text Mike (AA2LS) (USA) Friday 6th January 2012 I need a copy of the OS $ CP/M for the OC8820. AA2LS@YAHOO.COM author date text Ozy Max (Australia) Thursday 29th December 2011 Starting about 1980, (In Australia) I developed a large Accounting Package that ran on the OC8820.. In 1980, the OC8820 was a prototype bunch of black boxes in a Rack-Mount. The advanced features of this OS and hardware were instantly obvious.. (Multi-tasking$ Bit manipulation$ Base offset addressing etc.) When the first IBM PCs came out later, I was appalled at how "inferior" they were by comparison.\ I had many difficulties with the new OS - and my many questions to the USA research team hit a brick wall of secrecy.. It seemed like every response had to be cleared by the Litton CIA!\ I eventually got the Accounting System working and it sold well for many years.. Its best features were enabled by the Multi-Task "Pipeline" (an OS feature where independent Tasks could pass/share data)..\ Litton realized the importance of this research and they tried to encrypt the OS itself. Normally, you can''t encrypt machine code.. They did it by adding a hash to the addressing offset and including this offset in all hard addresses. I believe they hoped this trick would ''slow down'' the pirates. It only took me a few days to break this simple encryption.. I needed to enable the "CALC'' key - and that required me to alter the OS, which was when I realized it was encrypted. The sh*t hit the fan when the USA guys saw that my package used the ''Calc'' key. I was blessed with a personal visit and a rebuke from the Asian Area manager. I hope I didn''t damage the potential of that great ''PC''..\ Everything seemed to go downhill after author date text Pete (US) Friday 17th December 2010 I have one of these and a few disks with MS8 on it. I am desperate for any additional software or documentation. Especially CP/M. I can''t figure out MS8 at all. I''ve accidentally figured out how to list out the directory but, that''s about it. Anyone know anything at all about MS8 ? author date text Clasho (Argentina) Monday 1st November 2010 Hi Johnny! Good to know that there is a machine like that in good form... Please, let me know if you have the MOS (Monroe Operation System) CP/M for this computer. I would like to contact you. Thanks a lot. author date text Johnny (United States of America) Thursday 1st July 2010 I actually have one, Litton - Monroe OC-8820. As well as the Monroe printer. It kinda works, powers up, and such. But I get a orangeish screen with some script on it. That''s as far as it goes though. As far as I can tell it''s in very good condition. Email me if you would like some pictures of it or it itself. 1078 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230608081221/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1078 2023-06-08

The Monroe OC-8820 was an all-in one Z80 based system featuring 128 to 256 KB of RAM, a monochrome CRT and a dual 5.25" 300 KB floppy disk drive.

It used its own multitask operating system, but a CP/M OS could be acquired separately along with a specific Monroe BASIC interpreter, Dbase II, Wordstar and a spreadsheet (probably CalcStar). Even under CP/M, You could run the a Spreadsheet report and still run Wordstar.

A 10 MB hard-disk drive unit was also available.

The Monroe computer family also had a color graphics model, but we have no information about it.