The Monroe OC-8820 was an all-in one Z80 based system featuring 128 to 256 KB of RAM, a monochrome CRT and a dual 5.25" 300 KB floppy disk drive.
It used its own multitask operating system, but a CP/M OS could be acquired separately along with a specific Monroe BASIC interpreter, Dbase II, Wordstar and a spreadsheet (probably CalcStar). Even under CP/M, You could run the a Spreadsheet report and still run Wordstar.
A 10 MB hard-disk drive unit was also available.
The Monroe computer family also had a color graphics model, but we have no information about it.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners.
In ''83 I used to sell and install Monroe OC-8800 computers. They had the 8810 with 2 floppy drives and the 8820 originally came with a 5 meg full height hard drive. Units were manufactured in Lexington, SC, a Monroe owed assembly plant that operated at 50 degrees with the lights off (robotics). My first sale was to Woody Bilton Ford in St. George, SC. A company in Litchfield SC had a great auto dealer F$I package. The bought the 8810 with a Diablo daisy wheel printer. My next sale was to C$S Bank (now Wachovia (Wells Fargo)). Again, another F$I package with the Diablo printer, Word Star, D-Base, and Supercalc. Monroe also had a Tobacco package that would print the purchase order (oki dot printer) and the check (Diablo) at the same time. Sold like hotcakes. The following year Monroe came out with an 80186 processor machine with “Open Office” by Software Products International”. Open Office did everything MS Office did, but better. Office 2000 was about the same. I sold the fool out of that one too. But IBM came out with the 80286, Monroe bet the farm on 80186, and that was the end of Monroe computers. However. Monroe did a great job of making computers useful for business.
As a foreign student (Argentina) in 1982 I trained police department administration at Institute of Police traffic Management in Jacksonville, Florida using Monroe 8820 and DBASE. They used it to track stolen property. I was hired in 1983 by Litton/Monroe as salesman, I was the only one selling this system from a team of 7 that sold the old accounting systems. I was the only user of the 20 APPLE IIC in the auniversity and found the Monroe 8820 to be more business oriented with the three applications DBASE, WORDSTAR, VISICALC.
Thursday 9th January 2020
Ted (Usa)
Hi everyone, good morning! I have found a variant of this machine, a Monroe MCA200 that has been made in Argentina. Anyone did have success to find manuals or any extra information about OC8820? I have found several notes in magazines of their period, but nothing with technical data about their internals or usage.
Tuesday 26th November 2019
Alejandro (Argentina)
NAME
OC-8820
MANUFACTURER
Litton - Monroe
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
U.S.A.
YEAR
1982
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
The Monroe BASIC was an extended version of the BASIC used in the Luxor ABC80/ABC800 computers.
KEYBOARD
Typewriter type, 93 keys with numeric keypad & function keys
CPU
Z80
SPEED
Unknown
RAM
128 to 256 KB
VRAM
16 KB
ROM
Unknown
TEXT MODES
80 columns x 25 lines
GRAPHIC MODES
None
COLORS
Monochrome amber
SOUND
Unknown
SIZE / WEIGHT
Unknown
I/O PORTS
1 parallel and 1 serial port
BUILT IN MEDIA
2 x 300 KB 5.25 floppy-disk drives
OS
Proprietary Monroe OS called OS8MT (MT for multi-tasking), CP/M