NORD-1

NORD-1
The NORD-1

The NORD-1 was Norsk Data's first minicomputer. It was the first commercially available computer made in Norway.

It was a 16-bit system, developed in 1967. The first NORD-1 (serial number 2) installed was at the heart of a complete ship system aboard the M/S Taimyr, a Japanese-built cargo liner. The system included bridge control, power management, load condition monitoring and the first ever computer-controlled, radar-sensed anti-collision system (Automatic Radar Plotting Aid). Taimyr's NORD-1 turned out remarkably reliable for the time, with more than a year between failures.[1]

It was probably the first minicomputer to feature floating-point equipment as standard, and had an unusually rich complement of registers for its time. It also featured relative addressing, and a fully automatic context switched interrupt system.

It was also the first minicomputer to offer virtual memory, offered as an option by 1969.[2]

It was succeeded by the NORD-10.

Remaining machines

The NORD-1 has been unusually well-preserved. Approximately 60 machines seem to have been produced, and at the very least 10 machines have been preserved, including serial numbers 2, 4, and 5. This may owe to the fact that the company Norsk Data was already a very large and exceedingly rapidly growing corporation by the time many of these machines were decommissioned.

Sources

  1. ^ Morten Breivik and Gunnar Sand (2009). Jens Glad Balchen: A Norwegian Pioneer in Engineering Cybernetics. Modeling, Identifcation and Control, Vol. 30, No. 3, 2009, pp. 101-125, ISSN 18901328.
  2. ^ Norsk Data Annual Report 1982, ND Publications, April 6th 1983
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