ICL 1501 (Cogar C4)

A small commercial computer system, that was used for example in petrol stations or at the adminsitrations of Baden-Wuerttemberg. The system was designed by George Cogar who founded the Cogar Corporation, that was later aquired first by Singer and then by ICL.

The machine has only a very small ROM. With this, application programs could be loaded from the tape drive. These bizarre drives use small cassettes with only one coil, that mount the tape automatically with a hook. The computer has two of these drives that are located below the cover, which is opened in the picture. Without a loaded program, not even the cursor is flashing.

The machine has a BNC connector at the rear for connecting external peripherals like printers, disk drives, tape drives etc.

Detailed view of the tape drives

On the lower edge the encapsulated coil which is hidden behind a plastic frame. On the left side, the divided read-write-heads. The red key causes the rewinding of the tape.

Keyboard

Where does the arrangement of the letter-keyboard come, where the numerics-block is in the middle? Correct: From the IBM card punches and their epigones!