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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?"
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
>the world would never need more than three
>computers.
Well, that's liberally paraphrased, but the thing to understand is the person who said that was *right*.
He was making a practical observation about the market, and the market would have been saturated at just a handful of the computers of the day.
A person making a business plan for the next fiscal year doesn't need to worry about a technological revolution that may take place over the next decade or half century.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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)
No Compaq in the list.
I have one of the original Compaq "luggable" computers (serial #1555) when they were still limited to two 5-1/4" floppy drives.
I subsequently upgraded it to an XT-clone, with a giant (at the time) 10 megabyte drive. It was one of the first 3-1/2" hard drives, shock-mounted (with big rubber "feet") within a 5-1/4" enclosure.
I still have it, complete with the nylon carrying case. I dig it out once in a while and boot up DOS 3.3, just to boggle the mind of people who have never seen one.
I can now build a complete near-top-of-the-line computer for about 15% of what I paid for that thing, and that's not even accounting for inflation since the early 80's.
I've been wondering if Intel or AMD will release a 4.77 GHz processor, to commemorate how far we have progressed since the original 4.77 MHz 8088 processor in the first IBM PC.
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!
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.
That was at the University of Pennsylvania. The Moore School of Electrical Engineering. They've got the schematics of the chip up on the wall next to the little Eniac museum. Their project page is here. While it was obviously a challenging and interesting project, the schematics for the chip make it look pretty simple to eyes used to Pentiums, Athlons, etc.
They also had some of the programmers for the ENIAC on hand for a few celebrations of some 50th anniversary. I really regretted not meeting them.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Wasn't this a super-fancy SGI building not long ago? How the mighty have fallen.
sulli
RTFJ.