Philips Micom 2001E

Speed	4 MHz
Memory	128 KB
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Release Date:	1/1/1981
Manufacturer:	Philips

Donated By:	Shawn Westbrook

The Micom mini is a bit of an oddity in the 'personal computer museum', but it's just too interesting and too rare to ignore. Sold primarily as a word processing system, the Micom was quite advanced in certain ways for its time. Although a daisy wheel printer was connected to the unit, you could actually do special mathematical symbols and even limited graphics with the unique way that it printed. The unit we have has two 8" floppy drives and the machine actually has filters inside of it (like a furnace) to keep it cool. It's also had the side effect of keeping the unit quite clean over the years. In true mini fashion, the controller itself has no interface and appears to do little on its own. You can connect various operating consoles to it to see it actually work. Shown here, the main console actually looks a lot like the Commodore PET. We have a lot of brochures and instruction manuals which we will be posting here because very little information about this machine is out there on the net. If you know more about this unit, please share with us!
This computer is currently interactive in the Museum.

Micom 1001 Terminal

This was an additional terminal that could be connected to the Micom. It had a single LCD line for typing into and allowed information to be listened to from a microcassette for dictation. Or was it a storage device? I think we'll have to try it out to know for sure.

Micom Operator Console

This is the operator console terminal for the Micom 2001E. It looks very similar to the PET computer from Commodore.

User Comments

Alan Whitton on Friday, May 03, 2013
I had the privilege to work at Micom and on one of these very systems as a Co-op student. The stuff I learned there I still use today (not the Z-80 assembler but all the UNIX stuff that the software for this system was developed on). My father's secretary at Air Canada was one of the first folk to use one of these at the time and she loved it. Given my father's penchant to madly revise documents, life was much simpler on this system as compared to an IBM Selectric. Excellent exhibit!

Philip Cresswell on Tuesday, March 19, 2013
My wife wrote her doctoral thesis on one of these. The publisher of Daily Information - an Oxford University newsheet - had a pair of them for hire, and I seem to remember that printing the final version took all night. The little terminal with LCD display could be used remotely, with the text stored on the tape drive. That data could then be downloaded into the Micom and saved onto eight inch floppy. We still have the floppies and would love to convert them to more modern medium. philip.cresswell@gmail.com

jim pook on Wednesday, February 06, 2013
I was the main tech for all the GNWT Micoms which were used by all our government departments. I have intimate knowledge of this equiptment as well as the Daisy Wheel "Qume" printers. At one point I had all the diagnostic disks and various service aids for these units. I will try to see if they are still around (somewhere). Man I feel old....

Garrison on Friday, October 14, 2011
I learned how to use the MICOM in 1982 when I lived in NYC. It was very popular with CITIBANK, Irving Trust, and Bankers Trust Company. The printers had an enormous lucite covering to reduce the noise. I used the computer extensively for file merges of mass-mailings. The printer also worked well with continuous sheet fed checks. Envelopes and a continuous sheet feed were quite another matter. When I moved to San Francisco, I found a company that used the MICOM. They were obsessed with letters that had different sizes (i.e. W took up more space than an I). Made it virtually impossible to try and line up columns or numbers. WANG was one of the biggest competitors in New York. Back in '82 I was earning about $15-20/ hour for typing. Not too shabby back then!

Paul McDermott 2001 Word Processing Services on Thursday, July 21, 2011
The 1001 was called the fox, the tape was for data storage, the machine was for cheap data entry as a full blown 2001 with double drives, sheet feed and tractor cost about $25000.00 in 1979 bucks (top of the line Cadillac)the 1001 were a very weak input machine. There was an excellent spell checker called the Validator that Reid Bodwell engineered (based on Radio Shacks spell checker). I sold hundreds of Micoms into the used market as well as alternative software programs running under CPM

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