General Automation

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.

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.

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.

Products

• SPC-12 (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)
• GA 18/30 (June 1968, IBM 1800 and IBM 1130-compatible)
• SPC-16/30, /50 & /70 (November 1971)
• SPC-16/40, /45, /65 & /85 (January 1972)
• LSI-12/16 (January 1974)

These computers were initially produced with silicon on sapphire circuit technology provided by Rockwell International but yield problems caused a switch to conventional ICs by 1975.

• GA 16/110 and 16/120 (December 1976)

These SPC-16 compatible computers were based on a two-chip microprocessor supplied by Synertek

• GA 16/220 (July 1978)
• GA 16/330
• GA 16/440
• GA 16/460
• GA Zebra 1700/1750

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