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Re-Opened Computer History Museum Explored
gosand writes "An article over at OSNews gives a nice overview of the recently re-opened Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. There are some good pictures in the article, and also at the Museum's website. They have a lot of very interesting computers, including an Apple I (signed by Woz), an Enigma machine, and Crays 1, 2, and 3 (yes, there was a 3!) Maybe you have something sitting in your basement that you would like to donate?"
I have a really old DEC Rainbow... if I can find it :-).
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
ive never been much on museums, but this looks like it would be interesting.
then again... probably not.
796F75206D75737420626520626F726564
What the Museum does not look for in a donation: It's difficult for us to turn people away when they have taken the time to contact us about a particular item. Sadly, we must do this when the item in question is something the Museum already has or has decided does not meet our criteria. Some of the items the Museum can no longer accept include: IBM PC IBM PC Jr Commodore PET Commodore 64 Commodore VIC-20 Apple II (+/c/e) TI 99/4 Timex Sinclair
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
The previous article was an "Ask Slashdot" article from an individual who wanted to see things that geeks would want to see in North America. I guess he can add THIS to his list.
... when you can send all your old junk/I mean treasured old computers to a museum?
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
I don't want to see anything created after I was born be in something called a "museum" ... it makes me feel old...
Hahah, they have a section on their site for donations:
... Some of the items the Museum can no longer accept include:
It's difficult for us to turn people away when
I guess they put this section on their website for a reason, right? Do people really think a C64 is that old? Speaking of Commodores, a nice C64 emulator for Pocket PC's was recently released. (It runs great on an h5555 iPAQ - It's been providing me with hours of entertainment... oh yeah, Archon II: Adept) /nostalgia
There was a useful link in this section on finding local PC recyclers: There's even one in Seattle that recycles, repairs & redistributes old computers to local nonprofit organizations. Very cool! Sites like this need more publicity.
I have a really old computer from thousands of years ago. The name brand is "Abacus" and I believe they had many patents on the technology. The computer works by having the operator move beads based upon the calculation being performed. This is known as programming. Once the program has been written, the answer is immediately available. Execution time from programming it to getting the answer is zero, meaning that this Abacus brand computer is infinitely fast.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Quick, somebody donate a new webserver!
=Smidge=
Yeah but does it have a Gold's Gym right across the street?
... oh wait. Computers and exercise don't really go together. Never mind.
Didn't think so
How I loved the sprite graphics on my TI99/4A. A friend and I each had one...he went on to code for idSoft, and I went on to be a lowly sysadmin :)
I'm curious...how did your first computer affect your life? (assuming you aren't 13 years old and your 1Ghz PC is still affecting you).
There's Kevin Stumpf's place in Waterloo
n de x.htm
http://www.unusual.on.ca/nostalgictechnophile/i
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
When the museum closed it was at the lows of the dot-bomb, now it is finally re-opeining could this mean that tech industry is improving? Maybe.
There is no god
this organization seems to count on donations for their displays. does anyone know what sort of process they use for cleaning, repairing and sorting the different devices that arrive at their doorstep? also, what happens to those computers that are donated but not used for display purposes? curiously yours.
because that sucker is now history!
----------
I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
After an aerial tour of the DEC facilities, we landed and Ken Olsen, then president of DEC, greeted us.
The high point of that day for me was the private dinner with Gordon and Gwen bell on the floor of the Computer Museum, then located at DEC, after hours. That day, Gordon had caught the fish that they served us for dinner.
I wasn't even supposed to be on that trip, being just a junior systems programmer at the time. One of the senior scientists had to cancel, and I got his place. I don't think I ever met Gordon or Gwen again, but I won't ever forget that day.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
there is a rather large conglomerate of people who metamod all negative moderations as unfair and all postive moderation on trolls as fair
If so I call dibs once my position at IBM is outsourced to India
The picture of the Alto has a three button mouse displayed. I guess this is the part of the system that Apple didn't incorporate and Microsoft decided to use. NOTE: I am a long-time user of Apples and a short-time user of their mice.
After all, the G5 is so fast that the G4s will look like museum pieces.
See Bruce, these are the types of stories you need to post more often. Straight to the point, with a happy ending...somewhat. (BTW, favorite quote ever, "You'd think you were on drugs...but thats what REALLY happened.")
As of 10/06/03, I hate COBOL developers.
I was cleaning out the cellar recently and found my old Atari 400, I missed the old dog! I also have a couple 800xl's and an XT(a rebranded and recased 800xl basically, marketed as a game system). I almost have my own Atari museum going here.
I'll give the crays and enigma machines as a concession. Other than that, what would computer history be made of? I've got a 486SX somewhere that I call Nessie (I figured it was ancient and half the people I talk to don't believe it could actually exist). Would that be history?
Parallel ports, 300 baud modems, an "Internet In A Box" package with Mosaic, a directory of BBS phone numbers, a "pre-tables" website. Does that count as history too?
"you've had your desktop for over a week?
throw that junk away, man, it's an antique!"
-- Yankovic (It's All About The Pentiums)
They have a lot of very interesting computers, including an Apple I (signed by Woz), an Enigma machine, and Crays 1, 2, and 3 (yes, there was a 3!)
Imagine a Beowolf cluster of...
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
One of the more interesting things was the internet (or arpanet) router. A six-foot high cabinet. And stuck on the side, was a hand-drawn map of the entire internet. On one piece of 8.5x11. With about 15 nodes. I hope it didn't fall off when they moved it to the new museum.
I think we blew the tubes out of the ENIAC that was hosting thier site...
*ahem*
A couple of years ago there was a university project somewhere that implimented an ENIAC on a modern chip. I wonder if the museum has that. Maybe sitting besides the original to demonstrate the rapid pace of development or something.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
No.
I would rather use my Apple Lisa as a paper weight to prevent my old 1960's magazine porn collection from blowing around from gusts in the basement.
Don't do pr0n, do ya?
You know what? For the first time I didn't imagine a Beowulf cluster of anything. I was imagining how those old military computers looked really cool and how I'd like to build a case that looks like that...complete with ashtray :P
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
I haven't gotten in a good meta-discussion in a while, so here goes...
.sigs that say "all troll/offtopic mods are M2'd 'unfair'". But my M2 experience is that there are very few negative mods... I'd say I average 2 negative mods per session of 10, rarely 3 or 4, more often 1 or none.
.sig! The original poster saw what was going on and posted a reply that tipped me off, so the "+5, Informative" post got a -1 Redundant from me.
I've read the
I've only had a few opportunities to M2 mods of troll posts, and all were Fairly modded as Offtopic or Troll.
It would take a lot for me to M2 a positive mod as "unfair", but up-modding the GNAA post would definitely get a big thumbs-down.
Other than the obvious trolls, though, I've only found one time in M1 that I needed to mod a post down. This post was a cut-and-paste duplicate of an earlier post -- the fool even copied the original poster's
I got M2'd "unfair". Crap. But I'm vindicated by the post's current score: "0, Redundant".
That's my little story of M2. Now go to sleep.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
If you have old (non-copyrighted) software for the IBM 360/370 please contact the good folks at http://cbttape.org/
If you have any code post 1967 for Dartmouth Basic please check out http://dtss.org/
And if you have any influence with the University of Waterloo, ask them to open source or at least again market their old 370 products!
Thanks!
You can tell, as they start their timeline at 1945, thus allowing them to start with Eniac, and leave out the earlier british computer (Colossus?) used to break the german codes during WW2. And some interesting polish work from the 30's. And that french beasty, and .......
It's kind of like the 'space museum' that didn't mention Sputnik or Yuri Gagarin, childish really.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Z80 1kb Rom/ 1Kb Ram no expansion.
;-)
I went to a computer fair in 1980 more out of curiosity then anything else. Saw these and wanted one. Simple as that, parents waited until the next year and got me the ZX-81. I learnt basic and Z80 assembly. Upgraded to the ZX-Spectrum, then the BBC Micro (6502).
Before the fair I was thinking about being an architect, after the fair all I wanted was to work with computers. I started programming for a living at 17 and have done nothing else for close on 20 years, including picking up B.Sc.(HONS) Compu.Sci. As long as I keep getting new challenges I'll stick with the job.
Computers affect my life, nope not at all
The main point of moderation is to mark the good stuff up, so that more people see it. Not only are people who mod everything down (other than GNAA shit and the like) wasting their mod points, but they are detracting from what could be a good discussion.
From the FAQ:
That kitchen computer is a work of art.
Does anyone have more info on that?
None of these computers are running.
It's nice to have the hardware on display but I think an important part of showing the history is having them operational with their original operating systems. I've been to aviation and automotive museums and a large part of what they do is restore the aircraft and cars to their original working state. They may not fly/drive them often but if it doesn't fly/drive, well, you may as well have a photograph. I feel the same way about these old computers.
I'm reminded of a line I saw in Usenet once:
It isn't a computer if all it does is reactive passively to the Earth's magnetic pull and displace its own weight when submerged in water.
I patiently await the suggestion that all those comptuers be turned into a Beowful cluster...
Somewhere, I have a TRS-80 and an Osborne that has its original modem and CP/M disks. I think I have Wordstar for it too.
But you already know how hard it is to get even a second of privacy when you live in an institution.
In related news ...
"The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA became the first in the world to run an http server on a vintage Altair 8800. The exhibit was promptly destroyed when millions of crazed fanatics of the website "slashdot" tried to access the Altair at the same moment."
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
One eBay listing away!!! I'm obsessed with buying old crap off ebay.
But maybe we shouldn't think of it as being old. I would rather know what these computers are, and have programmed on some of them, than think of them as just relics. I am glad I was "there" when the personal computer was born, and learned to program on a TRS-80 in BASIC.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I visited this place a few years ago when it was a bit harder to get into and it was fantastic! Back then you had to call ahead and get an escort through the guarded gate onto the base. The museum was a few ancient warehouses in the shadow of this monstrous dirigile hanger which is also an amazing sight.
I forget his name, but the person who ran the museum was very cool and took an hour just guiding me and a friend through the museum chatting about all the computers they had. Back then everything was in a huge dark warehouse on big dusty shelves. It felt like walking into the government warehouse at the end of the Raiders of the Lost Arc. Every time you turned a corner you were facing a lost treasure.
Crazy old LISP OS machines in wooden cabinets. One of the original Internet routers the size of a refrigerator with a hand drawn network map of the Internet from 1979 still taped to the side. An amazing old Cray that looked like an art deco couch from the movie 2001. Computers that look like telephone switches from 1901. The kitchen computer! Oh my GOD they actually built this thing! See it and believe it. :-)
...is an extinct species known as the "Programmerus Americanus"
Table-ized A.I.
i heard a rumor that they have one or more CMs. i actually know how to maintain them, does anyone know if they are looking to restore one? it would be fun.
Our hands? Chisenbop, anyone?
Classic computers are really starting to be a collector's market. I remember just a few years ago you could pick up all the old 8-bit home machines you could ever want at flea markets and Salvation Army stores for $5-$10. Now it seems they've all been snatched up for sale on ebay for $50-$100, or more.
...didn't think about it. A couple of guys I used to work with would msg each other with the number 128 (IIRC) which, they said, (binarily) represented their two middle fingers extended in gest at the other person.
Donate one to me. ^_~ Again, you can reach the Ms. Geek Home For Wayward Computers at msgeek93 at yahoo dot com. And yes, this home really is a Home For Wayward Computers. I even have placed a few in good, adoptive homes.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I wont be impressed until they have a working difference engine like the British Science museum.
(I'm sure that there is a "back in my day the computers had cogwheels" joke to be had)
Hmm... No LISA?
Oh well, the crays give me the jollys anyway. Is that wrong?
Awesome! It's the old Silicon Graphics HQ Building, winner of architectural awards and all. I'm very impressed. I remember going to the building about 10 years ago on a trek to silicon valley (now I live here). You gotta go just for the building alone. No longer is that flight sim center nearby, but still very cool. Across the street to the movies after you're done.
If you show up for the Computer Museum lectures and suck up for a ride to San Francisco, guess who you'll probably end up riding back with?
The Computer Museum rocks.
The Enigma is a bit cranky. The mechanical contact switches in the keyboard need to be cleaned more often and one might guess. The Enigma is not very ergonomic either ... :-)
We used that Enigma machine to encrypt a real message that was known to have been broken by the folks at Bletchley Park. Some 60 years ago, their code cracking machine took ~2h 45m to search about 1/2 the key space (during which several false positives turned up) before the real key was found. Turing's algorithm, ported to a stock Cray 1, took 30 seconds to find the same key.
The Cray 1, designed in the mid 70's, was only 330 times faster than the special purpose Bletchley Park code cracking complex. That 1940's technology used at Bletchley Park was truly amazing for its time.
p.s. Not only does the Computer History museum have a Cray 1, 2 and 3; it has one of every major model that Cray designed going way back to his early CDC days and his special Navy machine.
chongo (was here)
Another interesting machine was a computer created by a student of the Wisconsin uni in the 50s/60s
:)
Not just any student, Gene Amdahl! It was part of his Ph.D. in EE.
Museum volunteer since, uh, hey Dag, when did I start...
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
What no ZX81 or ZX Spectrum.
I learnt to programm on a ZX81 before upgrading to the magical 48K Spectrum. Then some asshole down the road got all fancy with his commodore 64. Tried to tell me that 64K was better than 48K. Me and my floppy rubber keys knew better.
The Museum's new location was the former home of Silicon Graphics. I may have overlooked that fact when searching their web page for it, but thought I'd mention it anyway.
The building has been empty for the past few years. It's good to see that it's being put to good use.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Looks like they fired up a few of those CRAYs to help with the load :)
Colossus
Baby
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
What about updating your luggable into a new PC ? :)
just keep the box and throw anything that's inside.
You may also keep the internal monitor as a vga secondary display.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Hey, whatdaya know, it's just a block or so away from the office, how funny! Anyone planning on visiting give me a buzz and we'll do the whole slashdot meetup get together thing. :)
until recently, I had a working Gould 32/67 (circa 1982) in my garage.
:)
It was only the size of a fridge, but weighed around 900 lbs. Too bad that my wife insisted that I get rid of it. She didn't see the value in a huge, energy gulping, heat pumping, two MIP machine
I wonder if the museum would have been interested in such a beast.
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
Wasn't this a super-fancy SGI building not long ago? How the mighty have fallen.
sulli
RTFJ.
How about use a computer that can use a real operating system instead of a toy. Like Mac OS X for example instead of the non-threaded and non-multitasking MacOS.
Brief techie details: the Dragon and TRS-80 had a Motorola 6809E processor running at a couple of MHz, which was a hybrid 8/16 bit affair (for some operations such as MUL, the result was a 16-bit number which was placed in the combined A and B accumulators). It had X and Y general purpose registers, and S and U stacks which (at a pinch) you could use as extra registers. The built-in BASIC was so slow that you had to use assembly language to get anything exciting to happen. The interesting historical bit is that the 6809 begat the 68000, so without the 6809 there would be no Apple Mac.
The cassette tape transfer rate was 3000 baud (a full 32KB game never took more than 3 minutes to load) which was twice as fast as the better-known BBC Micro. You could connect an RGB monitor using a DIN-type connector, it took rather odd analogue joysticks, had a standard Centronics printer socket - as found on the printer end of a parallel cable these days - and there was a cartridge/expansion port. There are emulators available for the PC if you still want to play "Cuthbert Goes Walkabout". A 64K version of the Dragon and an external 100K floppy drive were released shortly before Dragon Data were taken over by GEC and (despite assurances to the contrary) liquidated.
Down an alley in Valletta (the capital of Malta) there's still a sign advertising Dragon computers - I took a photo of it last year!
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Hey - does anyone have a good link for the comparison of performance of the Cray machines to each other, to other computers of the time, and to modern day stuff? I once saw a graph that had "the computing power timeline" on it with both a super computer and personal computer trail, but I can't seem to find it again.
The museum is very interesting, but very america-focused. I understand there has to be a boundary else the museum would run outa space very quickly. However, there were many interesting computer-based innovations and landmarks in the rest of the world. Codebreakers in the war in the UK had interesting computers. Sir Sinclair pushed some interesting boundaries. I'd like to see some other stuff too, for example Russia must have created some interesting things during the cold war. Germany now houses some interesting computing establishments - what's the history there?
Hi,
do you get offers for weird, old soundcards? I've been looking for about 15 years for the Innovation SSI 2001 soundcard (ISA, SID6581-based) and so far I only got a picture from the magazine PCGames (circa 1989 I think)
I'd also like to get the "Mindscape soundboard" and "Creative Game Blaster" if you got those (I know a friend who'd appreciate that).
What am I talking about you might ask?
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
I took a look at the first page of that history... is the Wesley Clark mentioned in the 1967 entry as having been at the Ann Arbor meeting the now recently-retired Gen. Wesley Clark?
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
I noticed there was a reference in the article to a "first home computer from 1971 that "no one knows about"". Could this be the computer designed and built by Finnish physicist/inventor Erkki Kurenniemi? The machine he created would have been in existence around this time, a couple of years before other, more prominent examples. I've been reading a number of articles about this gentleman, and his activites (in building innovative early electronic musical instruments mainly), and there's also a documentary film about him, which was recently released on DVD ("The Future Is Not What It Used To Be"). A fascinating character to say the least, and a largely forgotten pioneer in many fields.
Three years ago when the IETF met in London (UK), the crypto geeks took a little excursion north on a train to Bletchley Park. It was good fun to visit, particularly in that company. There is also a small computer museum there, too.
For those of you who are in/around Europe, I recommend it.
-Erik
Just ran across this in m2. I could have sworn I was hallucinating or something. Note to moderators: Please smoke weed AFTER moderating on Slashdot. Blank TV screens and GNAA posts may be interesting while you're stoned, but otherwise they're boring. Yes, I will be doing my part to send that troll to m2 hell.
This guy hates it when anyone touches his damn ZX Spectrum. He had it; like what? 9 years ago, and wouldn't let me play a stupid car race game he programmed into it. He told me, at that time, that I broke it. Now he tells me he had just removed the friggin' batteries.
He know's who I am. I'm just trying to save karma here.
The ZX Spectrum..... Sorry...... I was thinking of something else here. I get Confused. Sue me.
His ZX Spectrum took ages to load any game. The only one I was allowed to play at his place was this Olympic sports competition. Remember the skiing part?