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Re-Opened Computer History Museum Explored

Posted by simoniker on from the room-sized-drool-objects dept.

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?"

3 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Computers by fishbowl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >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.
  2. Re:Let's get this out of the way. by ptbarnett · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Some of the items the Museum can no longer accept include:

    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.

  3. Don't forget the software! by Mainframes+ROCK! · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Hello, also don't forget that a huge amount of historic software has become lost; a partial list that comes to mind for the IBM 360/370 is Algol-W, PLUTO, the source code for PL/C, York APL, and many many others. Two of the first time shared operating systems, CTSS and JOSS appear to be gone too. These systems could live on through emulation if they could be found again.

    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!