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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?"
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
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... 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=
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.
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.
>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.
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
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!
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...
The world needs no more than one computer, it's just very spread out.
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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)