Products

The company first produced rugged mil-spec (military specification) computers which used Data General

Data General

Data General was one of the first minicomputer firms from the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation. Their first product, the Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicomputer...

 software. The company divisionalized in 1978 becoming Rolm Mil-Spec Computers and Rolm Telecom. The Telecom division spent much of the considerable profit realized by the Mil-Spec Computer division over the ensuing 1980s trying to penetrate the convoluted phone interconnect business. The first rugged computer system was called the 1601 Rugged Nova Processor and incorporated core memory in 8K add-on bricks. The 1601 was a popular machine with RCA. The Models 1602 and 1603 soon followed with greater capability and more memory. The 1666 was leveraged into the AN/SLQ-32 computer system sold to Raytheon, Goleta for Navy signal identification purposes and into machines sold to Singer Librascope. Bob Maxfield and Alan Foster were responsible for the design of the early processor chassis until Art Wellmanfrom Sylvania was brought on to take the computers to their next level mechanically. The 1602B and 2150 I/O box were designed and standardized for the Army ILS program and were top sellers at the time. The 1666 was also leveraged into the GLCM (Ground Launched Cruise Missile) and SLCM (Surface Launched Cruise Missile) hardware for McDonnell Douglas, St. Louis. The FUCM (Fast Underwater Cruise Missile) and SUCM (Slow Underwater Cruise Missile) programs were rumored at the time, but that opportunity never materialized. 32 bit machines were developed into the Hawk/32 computer and sold well up to the time the Rolm Computer division was closed in June of 1998. The Telecom division leveraged the 1603 processor into the heart of its original CBX. Over time, the company began to focus on digital voice, and produced some of the earliest examples of all-digital voice equipment, including Computerized Branch Exchanges (CBXs) and digital phones. Two of the most popular telecom systems were the ROLM CBX and ROLM Redwood (PBX and Key systems (KSU) models, respectively). The CBX was meant to directly compete with Northern Telecom's SL-1, AT&T

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

 Dimension telephone systems and other computerized digital voice systems being developed at the time. By 1980, ROLM had shot past AT&T in number of systems deployed to become the #2 PBX in North America. The Redwood, often called the "Deadwood" by many ROLM techs because it never caught on, was intended to compete with the Nortel Norstar Key System. When Siemens bought ROLM from IBM and introduced their "newer" models, which were renamed Siemens switches, the early ROLM phone switches were widely pressed into service as boat anchors (though a number of 8000 and 9751-9005 CBXs remain online at some companies) but the digital phone handsets were quite valuable for those expanding their phone networks. The later ROLM 9200 (actually a Siemens HCM200 Hybrid system renamed) was more competition for the leading Key Systems as the 9200 had intensive Least Call Routing software, which the Redwood did not. The company also produced one of the first commercially successful voicemail systems, PhoneMail. Digital ROLM telephones were unique from other telephones due to the lack of a physical switchhook button to hang up the phone. Instead a magnet was inserted in the handset and telephone set, and upon hang up of the phone, the magnetic connection disconnected the telephone line.

History

The company name was formed from the first letters of the founders names - Gene Richeson, Ken Oshman, Walter Loewenstern, and Robert Maxfield. The four men studied electrical engineering

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 at Rice University

Rice University

William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...

 and earned graduate degrees at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. At Rice, Oshman and Loewenstern were members of Wiess College. Not an original founder, Leo Chamberlain was hired on and became very much the soul of ROLM, advancing progressive workplace ideas such as GPW (Great Place to Work). The Old Ironsides campus was equipped with a swimming pool, openspace park areas, a cafeteria and recreation center.

ROLM originally made flight computers for the military and heavy commercial industries such as oil exploration (Halliburton) and paper production (IPC). Later, in an attempt at diversification, they branched off into energy management by buying a company producing an early version of such a system and the telecom industry by designing the CBX, internally running a 1603 computer. It quickly outsold AT&T, who at the time had not come out with a digital PBX, and became #2 behind the Nortel SL-1 switch by 1980. At one point, ROLM was poised to overtake Nortel as the leader in PBX sales in the North America.

In 1984 IBM partnered with (and later acquired) ROLM Communications in Santa Clara. ROLM started to lose pace with Nortel due to product issues and they never recovered. The 9751 CBX, which has IBM's name on it, was initially a successful product; but when ISDN service became more affordable, IBM never really updated the 9751 to integrate correctly with ISDN. Nortel leaped ahead on that issue alone; AT&T (now Avaya) and others gained ground and started to overtake ROLM. IBM's ROLM division was later half sold to Siemens AG

Siemens AG

Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Munich, Germany. It is the largest Europe-based electronics and electrical engineering company....

 in 1990. By 1993, Siemens bought out IBM's share in ROLM and later changed it's name to SiemensROLM Communications. However, the die was cast and the downturn (brought on by the 9006i series) continued. The ROLM name was eventually dropped in the late 1990s though Siemens still has copyright of it.

Currently, Black Box Resale Services, offers support for ROLM phone systems, including repair services for broken classic and later RISC ROLM phones and sales of refurbished units and Phonemail systems, as do many other secondary vendors. Many ROLMphones are still in use in large-scale universities, institutions and some corporations (Entergy

Entergy

Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. It is headquartered in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana.-History:...

, Huntsman

Huntsman

Huntsman may refer to:*Hunters who:**use guns/weapons for hunting**hunt with horses and dogs *Huntsman is also used as a military designation for units traditionally raised from huntsmen, see Huntsmen...

, NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

, The Southern Company

Southern Company

Southern Company is a public utility holding company of primarily electric utilities in the southern United States. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with executive offices also located in Birmingham, Alabama. The company is currently the 16th largest utility company in the world and the...

, the Santa Fe

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often abbreviated as Santa Fe, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The company was first chartered in February 1859...

 railroad (now part of BNSF), etc.), which were large scale ROLM users from the early days and are still known for being very reliable, though Siemens no longer makes any updates or new models of the CBX but still offers some technical support for them; however, most real ROLMs quieting keep running and unless they suffer a lightning strike or a hard drive failure (in the 9751s), no support is really needed.

NASA changed out most, if not all, of the older ROLMPhones for Siemens Optisets when the VL9000 was changed out for a Siemens 9006i/HCM300 switch. Behind the Mission Controller's chair in NASA Houston's Mission Control, a RP240E model used to hang but was replaced in the early 2000s by a Optiset.

Technical Information

The original CBX were not named except for the software release (IE:Release 5, Release 6), but then they changed with the release of the 7000 CBX, later becoming the 8000 (8000-8004 series, which had more memory and newer CPU cards as well as offering redundant critical electronics, power supplies, etc.) The CBXII 8004 Mdump 18a was the last release of the original series.
In the early 80s, ROLM introduced the VL9000 (VL=Very Large). Multi-node capable, it could have up to 15 nodes with over 20000 stations. The nodes could be connected via T1s or fiber. The box and a lot of hardware was similar or the same as the 8000 series but the main bus and software were totally different. The 9000 could offer many newer features the 8000 could not (The 1st 9000VL was going to Georgia Power

Georgia Power

Georgia Power is an electric utility headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is the largest of the four electric utilities that are owned and operated by Southern Company....

/Southern Company

Southern Company

Southern Company is a public utility holding company of primarily electric utilities in the southern United States. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with executive offices also located in Birmingham, Alabama. The company is currently the 16th largest utility company in the world and the...

 but was delayed in it's delivery, while SN 002 was delivered to Gulf States Utilities

Gulf States Utilities

Gulf States Utilities was an electric power generation and distribution company headquartered in Beaumont, Texas. The company was founded in 1911 as Eastern Texas Electric, a holding company for Stone & Webster...

 HQ in Beaumont, Texas

Beaumont, Texas

Beaumont is a city in and county seat of Jefferson County, Texas, United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's population was 118,296 at the 2010 census. With Port Arthur and Orange, it forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the...

 and installed by GSU

GSU

GSU may refer to one of several universities:* Georgia State University, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA* Governors State University in University Park, Illinois, USA* Grambling State University, in Grambling, Louisiana, USA...

's own telecom group ahead of SN001 being delivered to Georgia. GSU, now part of Entergy, retired the VL9000 in late 1990s and it was replaced with a SiemensROLM 9006i (actually sold by Siemens overseas 1st as the HiCoM (HCM) 300 and was nothing like a real ROLM).

The various models of IBM produced ROLM 9751 CBX are 10, 20, 40, 50 & 70. The ROLM 9751-9005 is known throughout the telecom industry. It has got a user friendly programming interface to administer adds, moves and changes. The PBX will support from 50 extensions to 20,000 extensions.The 9005 software supports ANI (Automatic Number identification) which was a feature needed for many of today's CTI apps. It integrated easily with many of the 3rd party voice mail systems as well as ROLM's own call processing product, known as PhoneMail. However, IBM did not keep up with telecom standards on the Central Office as well as it should have; which kept IBM/ROLM from delivering an ISDN PRI solution for the 9751 until late in the game. By then, Nortel, the old AT&T (later Lucent and now Avaya) as well as others had pulled ahead and ROLM never regained ground.

ROLM 9751 – The Models Defined

The Model 10 bring the power and applications of the 9751 CBX to small and medium-size business in a compact, cost-effective package.Up to 100 stations can be supported by a single modular cabinet (single shelf) system. Cabinets two and three each supporting up to 250 stations, can be added in an integrated, stackable fashion to bring the Model 10's capacity to 600 stations. The Model 10 is designed to operate in standard office environments. Release 9005 supports the 9751 CBX Model Model 10 with all the single-card interfaces and a full range of applications. The Model 10 has the same data connectivity capability as the other 9751 CBX models, is fully data compatible, and with the optional Data Front End Processor II(DFE II), becomes a highly efficient system for voice and data integration. The Model 10 cannot use Cornet hardware (RPDN card); CORNet is a proprietary networking software (an extension of ISDN PRI protocols) for Siemens PBXs and the original 9751-9005 model. Also the cabinet is a different design from the other models (the Model 20 through 70 use the same cabinet design, etc).

The Model 20 comes equipped for the immediate use of integrated voice and data. The Model 20 (with the standard high-capacity cabinets) was designed for organizations which require 100 to 720 stations.

The Model 40 use the standard high-capacity 9751 cabinet to support up to 2,000 stations in a single-node configuration of up to five cabinets. It can be easily customized and arrives on site as a "data ready" system. The Model 40, like all other models of the 9751 CBX, is fully digital except for any basic services which require analog telephones.

The Model 50 adds fault tolerance to the single-node offering for organizations that require an extra level of system availability. The 9751 CBX Model 50 offers common control redundancy on one shelf and full redundancy in the following components: shared electronics,ROLMbus 295E, Advanced Diagnostics Processor, and Data Front End Processor II (DRE II) Cards. Power redundancy is optional.

The Model 70 is a multi-node, fault-tolerant solution for distributed and large installations. The Mode 70 can support more than 20,000 stations in 15 nodes. The Model 70 offers redundancy, like the Model 50, with added redundancy in the hardware supporting the multi-node configuration: the Control Packet Network(CPN, for CPU-to-to-CPU
communications) and the internode Links (INLs, the node-to-node links). Power redundancy is optional.
Model 70 nodes may be:
Co-located: up to 200 feet with right-of-way, connected with
twinaxial INLs;
Distributed: up to 20,000 feet with right-of-way, connected with
fiber-optic INLs;
Remote: up to 50 miles, or with no right-of-way, connected using
Extended Digital Interties (XDI) over standard T1 facilities.
In the early 90s, Siemens came out with "new 9751-9006i" models called the Model 30 and Model 80. They were nothing like the ROLMs. Only devices that were kept from the older models were the ROLMPhones and PhoneMail. The Mod 30/80 9006i series was a disaster for Siemens, and this caused a lot of old ROLM customers to jump ship to another vendor like Nortel or Avaya. The 9006i models were really HiCoM (HCM) 300 models sold overseas. Eventually, Siemens changed the name back to the HCM name, ending production in the late 90s with Version 6.6 (original release was 6.1 or 9006 release 1).