2013 interview with Tony Robbi of RCA, collaborator with Joe Weisbecker (c) Herb Johnson 2016 Ad-hoc interview with Anthony "Tony" Robbi at the Sarnoff Collection opening, October 2nd 2013. This interview was video-captured, in front of the Collection's display of Joseph Weisbecker's computer and COSMAC computers. Tony Robbi was one of the developers of the FRED computer, a design predecessor to the COSMAC microprocessor. INterview conducted and transcribed by Herb Johnson, who asked the questions below. Tony agreed to my use of this interview by email, some time afterward. - Herb Johnson * What did you say Joe was using this computer for? Among other things he used..well he programmed some games on it but he also used it to control a display that made various wierd noises and things, at Thanksgiving time. When kids came knocking on the door, they got the advantage of a computer-controlled Thanksgiving display of some sort. Of course Joyce Weisbecker would be the one to tell you more about that. * Is this [computer on display] one of the FRED computers? No, it's not FRED. I believe this predates FRED. This is the computer that Joe built in his basement for his own use. He had been working for RCA in mainframe computers for a number of years, and he always wanted to have a computer in his basement. And it wasn't practical as long as they were made out of vacuum tubes or individual transistors. But when integrated circuits started to appear, Joe sat down and designed himself a small computer, made out of T-squared L components and several boards. And I believe this is the prototype, although I've never seen it. The computer that he built, led immediately to the FRED, which I was one of the designers of, and designed the logic and laid out one of the two main boards of the FRED computer. Even though that wasn't my speciality particularly, but "all men to the oars". An interesting sort of "human nature" fact about that, is we were in a part of the lab, sort of a funny spot, and we didn't have a real, physical laboratory. And we didn't have a floor shop near us to make things . So Joe had some tables delivered, and we put saws and all kind of drill presses and things like that, out in the *hall*. Once management saw that, they said "maybe these guys need a lab...". So they actually gave us a lab. (laughs) So one of Joe's attributes was, he didn't care much for management.(laughs) He was very creative, he liked to be his own person. * How many FREDs were produced? Seven. Seven all over, I took one home and showed a couple of rudimentary games to my kids at the time... I was programming a few of the games myself.... * and Joyce programmed it too, right? Eventually, but not at that time. She might have had suggestions for games,.. of course originally we started by simulating existing games on the computer, which was an easy thing to do. But Then Joe pretty quickly got into...we got into novelty games. Something like, well, Pong that Atari made around that same time, was sort of a novel game, there wasn't any simulated tennis game really available. Tennis, yes, but not some kind of simulated tennis that you could put into a drawer in your house. Same thing was true in some of the early games, that were developed at RCA. They were sort of unique for computers, they couldn't be easily built without a computer, not practically done. * What became of all the FRED's? Well that's a good question. I never wound up with one. One of them, I don't know if Paul Russo stills owns it or not. Paul designed one of the boards in the FRED. And I think he had a FRED for awhile. He was Canadian, and he went back to Canada, so somebody would have to try to find or call Russo somewhere in Canada, in his 70's probably. (laughs) Well, I have notes like some of the brainstorming meetings on FRED, Personally I have circuit diagrams, programs, and all that kind of stuff in my attic. * Some are in the notebooks too, but bring them around sometime. And introduce yourself [for this video] I will bring them around. I have to get rid of [stuff in] my attic.(laughs) This is Tony Roby talking here. I was at RCA, I lasted from December of 1961 until 1987... a 25 year run, more or less. And the computer stuff was the most fun I had. [but] beside the FRED kind of stuff, I did automotive stuff. Like for Chrysler we designed one of the first computer controlled, engine control systems. And they actually produced it for several years. From the lean-burn systems, made with cosmac VIP. That was in the late 70's I believe, becuase the Clean Air Act had come along and emission controls had been put on the automakers. So there was an opportunity there that we took advantage of. * Did they produce their own COSMAC, or did they use an RCA chip? No! no, they used the RCA COSMAC. In fact Chrysler was our biggest customer for two or three years. It gave us the volume we needed, to build, you know, to make the price reasonable, for other people to use. Kept it alive longer than it otherwise would have been, because we had a volume customer. * The gaming machines...? The gaming machines didn't have any volume. How many Studio II's were sold, I don't even know. But the trouble is, that RCA's main product division that sells entertainment devices, was the television part of RCA, based in Indianapolis. And they had very little interest in anything digital. So they didn't want to take it up. So it wound up I think selling Studio II through parts and accessories, or some other sort of obscure division of RCA, which sort of doomed the whole thing. * Then Video gaming [business] kinda crashed in the late 70's... yeah, that is true. But we also had some sort of serious educational applications too. We were working with Random House, at the time was a part of RCA, at the height of the Robert Sarnoff RCA comgomerate phase. When we had frozen chicken, Hertz [car rental], (laughs) and Random House.. But the Random House connection actually made some kind of sense. Especially If you think about it today, entertainment and publishing are sort of merging as we speak here, and that temporarily there [at that time] within RCA, they were together. Although I doubt NBC and Random House ever had much direct contact even though they were both in New York City. But anyway, we had serious educational applications. We took the FRED around to a number of schools and showed them educational programs. And the teachers were really impresssed. I worked with the Random House school division - Random House at that time had a school divsision - they worked with us to specifing some programs. I wrote some kind of an interpreter, so that teachers could actually specify tutorial type programs, without having to write code. *Sure, I saw some of those notes for various sorts of interpreters, for games... Yeah. [we discussed how he might contact the Collection to bring his notes and artifacts.] - Herb Johnson, recorded and transscribed Nov 2013 copyright 2016 Herb Johnson all rights reserved, "whd-whd-whd" beware