By Hervé Le Bouler.
Let's return to the lives of those involved in the R2E era with two new points of view. One from a young engineer fresh out of school, Yann Lanoë, who began his professional career in technical management in François Gernelle's team. The other is from Frédéric Cousin, maintenance technician at the Vitrolles regional branch. Both have joined the company at a key stage in its takeover by Honeywell-Bull.
Yann Lanoë, Technical Management Engineer
Born in 1957, he was a recent graduate of the ESEO engineering school in Angers when he joined R2E in 1981 as Technical Manager.
By this time, Bull had already bought R2E and maintained it as a homogeneous internal structure, on the fringes of the Group's other departments.
The technical management of R2E, based at Les Ulis in the Paris region, is split into two divisions: Hardware, headed by François Gernelle, and Software, headed by Michel Joubert.
With a degree in electronics, Yann Lanoë naturally joined the Hardware team, which comprises a team of around fifteen people, responsible for designing the hardware and producing the associated firmware.
Internal telephone directory of the Technical Department in 1983
Yann Lanoë worked there for 2 years making interface boards for peripherals such as screens, keyboards and hard disk or floppy disk drives (SASI). He thus became an input/output specialist.
Its remit is to design the hardware for these boards and develop the firmware (in Z80 assembler), mainly for the Micral 80-21 and 80-31 models.
He remembers having made a few firmware adaptations to specific keyboards for the banking sector, because the Micral, which was more for industrial use in the early days, is now (in 1981-1983) also popular with white-collar workers, and is well integrated into banks, the national education system, ministries including the Ministry of Justice, AFPA agencies, etc.
For a very specific need, he also developed an interface card for IBM PC cassette drives, to retrieve programs developed in BASIC. And yes, the first IBM PCs could be equipped with a cassette drive!
Commenting on this period of his life, Yann Lanoë tells us that "it was my first and most memorable job". But all good things must come to an end.
In 1983, prompted by François Gernelle's departure to found his own company, many employees left Bull. Increasingly at odds with management over his vision of the future of computing, François Gernelle set up Forum International to continue work on multiprocessor and multitasking computers, following on from the Micral. Several people followed his lead, but not Yann Lanoë. On the advice of François Gernelle himself, Yann Lanoë joined Delta Dore to bring his computer manufacturing expertise to the company. Indeed, as Forum International chose Delta Dore to build their computers, and Yann Lanoë took on the role of facilitator in the relationship with the customer, explaining François Gernelle's way of thinking internally and what he could expect from a manufacturer. That's what he did for about 4 years.
Why only four years? From the outset, Forum International's aim was to be at the cutting edge of progress, and it took up the challenge of the 32-bit processor. National Semiconductors (NS) had just released the NS32000, the very first fully 32-bit processor, ahead of Intel and Motorola. Unfortunately, it was so buggy that it performed no better than a Motorola 68000. NS corrected the situation and released a new version... in 1985 to correct all the known problems and finally achieve the expected performance. But until 1985, this period of technical wandering was fatal to Forum International because of the additional investment required for the unsuccessful attempts to finalise the computer.
Forum International had to terminate its contract with Delta Dore, which meant the end of the Micral adventure for Yann Lanoë.
He will remain with Delta Dore for the rest of his career. During his 35 years with the company, he held a variety of positions: senior technician, project and research manager, and finally director of embedded software and development for the industry business unit.
A fine career that will come to an end in 2019 with a well-deserved retirement.
Frédéric Cousin, maintenance technician
R2E's development also depends on the commercial success of its equipment with customers throughout France. The regional branches make a major contribution to this, as they are responsible for customer rollouts and the maintenance of their installations.
Frédéric Cousin graduated with a BTS in electronics and was hired by the R2E agency in Vitrolles in November 1983. Two years after Bull's takeover, R2E still stands apart from the rest of the Group, even in the regions. Not only from an organisational point of view, but also in terms of skills. Working there was very rewarding for Bull internally, because these employees were experts in IT compared with the others, and were recognised as such. A real team of experts.
His job as a maintenance technician involves working on Micral M (multi-processor, Intel 8080), Micral 802X (based on the Zilog Z80 processor), Micral 8055 (Z80 processor), SOR (networked system based on the 8055), Micral 9020 (8088 processor) and Micral 9050 (8086 processor). And beyond, As he stayed with Bull for 15 years, Frederic Cousin was naturally responsible for maintaining the Micral Compatible PC range (from 30 to 600) and the Zenith range.
On a daily basis on the roads of southern France, you have to imagine him in his vehicle with a boot full of maintenance equipment.
First and foremost, the essential soldering iron for changing components.
But also boxes of hardware, including electronic components (lots of RAM) and replacement I/O boards.
In addition, Cynthia uses software on cartridges containing different versions of OS and applications to repair application problems. Or track down hardware problems with RAM testers, magnetic media testers, software for calibrating different types of drive (floppy, magnetic, etc.).
Last but not least, the documentation! Numerous binders of instructions that he never gets rid of, because in the 80s and 90s, electronic documentation simply didn't exist. So you had to develop the muscles to carry those kilos of paper representing the electronic schematics of the various electronic boards or the software instructions for debugging applications.
A meticulous man, Frédéric Cousin managed to keep his maintenance equipment in very good condition right up until his retirement. He did us the honour of handing it over to the association, so that the parts could become part of the Micral research project and the core collection.
Part of the inventory of maintenance equipment kept by Frédéric Cousin
One customer managed by the Vitrolles branch, which Frédéric Cousin remembers well, is remarkable for the type of equipment installed. The client? AFPA. The equipment? the SOR. The use? to provide training by connecting students to a networked system.
The SOR consisted of Micral 8055 servers and DEC VT100 clients. The server was located in a machine room, and the terminals in the classrooms.
Micral 8055
But another customer in the region is famous for the number of Micral systems it has purchased and deployed. This is Autoroutes du Sud de la France, which chose the Micral N to manage its tolls. Unfortunately, the Vitrolles branch is not responsible for this customer, so Frédéric Cousin was unable to talk to us about it.
In 1999, Bull sold its microcomputing business to TASQ. Frédéric Cousin continued to work in IT maintenance for a number of years before joining RTM (Régie des Transports Métropolitains) in 2014 to manage the industrial maintenance of the transport operator's network.
Thank you to Yann Lanoë and Frédéric Cousin for taking the time to talk to us about their experiences during this pioneering period.
After these two encounters, our quest for knowledge is far from over, and we will continue to publish other testimonials to share with you over the coming weeks.
In the meantime, please don't forget to take part in the campaign to support our work! https://micral.mo5.com
