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1979-1980 Supreme Equipment and Systems Corporation.
As I grew more adept at repairing electronic equipment I yearned for greater challenges. I now wanted to work with microprocessors, and digital logic circuits full time. This company built AS/RS systems. (Automated Storage / Retrieval Systems). These are gigantic aisles of pallet or drawer racks with rolling robots that went down the middle to bring out the selected pallets or drawers to the end of the aisle so a person called an "Order Picker" could retrieve a part or a document. In some systems the pallet or drawer was brought out to a conveyor or wireless AGV that had a station that permitted automatic dumping of the drawer contents. Once that was done the robot would return inside the aisle and go to put the pallet or drawer back into its assigned location in the rack. I did the field service in the Greater New York area for these machines. I had all fortune 500 client sites, Grumman Aerospace, Sperry Gyroscope, Pan Am, Con Ed, and Mount Sinai Hospital to name a few. The control systems on these machines were based on either hardwired TTL logic ICs or they used Z 80 CPU single board computers (SBCS) on an S-100 bus. The software was stored in UV EPROMS. These robots moved in the X, Y and Z-axis planes. You can read more about how AS/RS machines in detail by clicking on the tab for ROBOTICS under machine projects on the home page of this site.
This company ran into financial trouble, and started to go out of business. I got a job right next door at S & S Machinery. Over a period of 3 years Supreme Equipment went down and down, until it went completely out of business. All that is left of this company are the buildings, which are now owned by other firms. S&S Machinery is still next door and still in business.