Slashdot Mirror
Australia's Largest Private Computer Collection In Pictures
Da Massive writes "UNIX PDP-7, a classic DEC PDP-8, the original IBM PC, Commodore's C64, Apple's Lisa, a MITS Altair 8800 made famous by Bill Gates, through to a working PDP-11 that plays the ADVENTURE and DUNGEON games. Max Burnet has got it all. Burnet has turned his home in the leafy suburbs of Sydney into arguably Australia's, if not the world's, largest private computer museum. Since retiring as director of Digital Equipment Corporation a decade ago, Burnet has converted his home into a snapshot of computer history. Every available space from his basement to the top floor of his two-storey home is covered with relics from the past. On top of his hardware collection are numerous punch cards, tape machines (including the original paper tape) and over 6000 computer reference books. So in demand is his collection that one Australian film called on him to recreate a computer setting (PDP-9) for a movie about the moon landing in 1969."
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Cray_2_Arts_et_Metiers_dsc03940.jpg
Max Burnett is a founding member of the Australian Computing Museum Society and I think you will find the PDP9, and probably most of the rest, are part of its collection and that Mr Burdett is storing them since the ACMS does not have a permanent home. They were possibly collected by Mr Burnett in the first place and donated to the society, but they would still be part of the ACMS collection. Any ACMS members care to fill in the details?
Presumably you too could join the ACMS and after a while have a house full of vintage computers too! :-)
Gee, were they talking about The Dish? They could have included the title.
A brilliant little film about how Parkes, near Canberra, was the ground station that actually received the moon landing signal. Same guys as 'The Castle' and 'Bad Eggs', so naturally it's very funny too.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:http://www.cio.com.au/article/268510/slideshow_--_tech_yesteryear_where_old_computers_find_their_final_resting_place
"Having immigrants answer a question about Don Bradman on their citizenship test is far more important."
That question is an urban legend, it doesn't exist and it never has. Having said that, the rest of your post deserves a +5 informative.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's a shame that most of these computers probably don't run any more - it's a bit like going to an aviation museum and seeing all these planes that will never fly again - it's a little bit sad. I'd love to see a museum with as much hardware *working* as possible - where you can see the blinkenlights, type something at the console, or whatever. Unfortunately, it's probably not very practical with many of these machines.
Maybe not, but there are people who are restoring the old machines. Here is a video of a restored IBM 1401 running. Their web site is here.
I actually had bothered (despite the site being molasses slow), and many of them weren't actual complete computers but just front panels.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I hate re-scrolling the browser after I click the 'next' or 'back' buttons for the slideshow.
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
Now, now, you could have black, white, cyan and magenta but you could also change the palette and have black, yellow, green and brown. You could also change from 320x200 to 640x480 resolution but then you'd only get black and one color from a selection of 16. After that EGA and VGA were amazing.
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
Here is a Mac they had in the 8-bit room:
http://www.matthewgrove.co.uk/personal/moblog/view/2008-11-15/resized_15112008531.jpg
Not cool.
Those fuckers at CIO magazine want you to click 51 times to view 52 images so they can get 52 times as many advertisement impressions.
Ridiculously onerous websites = Just Say No.