Fifty-Year-Old Computer Being Restored

James Green directs us to "a Sunday Age (Melborne) article which describes the discovery of a 52 year old computer found in a dusty warehouse weighing in at 2,000 kilograms. Attempts are underway to get the CSIRAC up and running as a museum piece next year." They say it uses 30 kilowatts per hour; I think they mean 30 kilowatt-hours per hour.

Comments

!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hook up a Beowulf cluster of these!

And before it gets said

[/]

There's only one of these things, so no one can build a beowolf cluster out of it.

I have to wonder whether this will have any impact on the MS antitrust suit, since perhaps MS can point to this thing and say: "Look, it's competition, and it's not running Windows!" Maybe this's why the Justice Department has become a bit more open to the idea of settling through arbitration!

Re:And before it gets said

[MrCreosote]

No Beowulf, but what about a Quake server???

Re:And before it gets said

[Llanfairpwllgwyngyll]

Well, if you take this plus the UK's "Baby" machine (worlds first stored program computer) rebuilt recently plus ENIAC plus the Manchester Mark 1 (all similar ages) then a Beowulf can't be far off surely :-)

YAGBC

[kipling]

yet another gratuitous beowulf comment

... you beat me to it 8-P

kilowatt-hours/hour?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, 30 kilowatts per hour is correct. a kilowatt-hour per hour is a kilowatt.

Re:kilowatt-hours/hour?

[kipling]

no, kilowatt is a measure of power, which is energy per time. so kilowatts per hour is energy per time^2

Re:kilowatt-hours/hour?

[matguy]

I would have to think that it should be just plain kilowatts since 30 killowats for an hour would be 30 kilowatt hours, which would make 30 kilowatt hours per hour redundant... I think....

matguy
Net. Admin.

Re:kilowatt-hours/hour?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, indeed, it's kilowatts. A kilowatt is a measure of power, which is energy per time. Saying "30 kilowatts per hour" is silly, as is "30 kilowatt-hours per hour". Thirty kilowatts of power is a correct measure of power consumption.

If something consumes 30 kilojoules of energy every second, then it consumes energy at a rate of 30 kilowatts. (One watt is one joule per second.)

Re:kilowatt-hours/hour?

[morris57]

Beautifully put. Too bad this bit of actual information was moderated down. The original post should not have contained the editorialization about the units anyway.

Re:kilowatt-hours/hour?

[Dwonis]

Exactly. It is a 30 kilowatt computer. It requires a constant supply of 30 kilowatts.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."

How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[h2odragon]

52 years old... If they restore it to actual operational status I'll bet they don't run it for very long at a time. Spare tubes and such are gonna be a bear to find. Power shouldn't be a big deal, there's almost certainly some local power company that'd eat the bill to have a "Sponsored by" sign on it.

I wanna know if they'd put it on the 'net, assuming of course they could find implementors for the necessary software. I'd be willing to do a little work on that, just to see it done. Show up the guy with the TRS80 you can telnet to.

Somebody beat me to the inevitable Beowulf comment.

Re:How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[Anonymous Coward]

My CIS degree from Southwest Texas State University might finally come in handy! I swear we were running this same monster when I went to school (1994-1998). All we learned was COBOL.. yech... I hope they get this thing on the net.. I also hope someone ports Linux to it :)

Re:How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[Crixus]

52 years old... If they restore it to actual operational status I'll bet they don't run it for very long at a time. Spare tubes and such are gonna be a bear to find.

That depends upon which type of tubes they use. There are a few companies still manufacturing several models.. the models for example that are still required in guitar amplifiers. 12AX7's, 6L6's, 5U4's, EL34's, etc....

I believe it was RCA that sold their manufacturing technology to a soviet company called Sovtek which is becoming a huge supplier (though musician friends are questioning their QC), and there is a company called Groove Tubes as well. There is still a Fender brand of vacuum tubes, but I think someone else manufactures them for Fender.

A little research revealed another company called Teslovak, and another called JJ Electronics.

I suspect these companies could tool up to manufacture any tube that was needed for this application.

Re:How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[Mr. Piccolo]

Depends on what type of tubes it takes. A lot of the highest-priced audio amplifiers still use them because, supposedly, it makes the sound better.

The problem is getting thousands of them. Imagine calling up your local music store:

"Can I help you?"
"Yes, I need 10,000 12AX7s and 5000 EL84s."
"What in the world do you need them for?"
"Well, I'm in charge of refurbising an old computer... Hello? HELLO?"


Hmmm... If the best audio equipment uses tubes, does that mean your computer will crash less if it uses tubes instead of transistors? ;-)

Re:How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[Vacuum]

There's nothing in the world like plugging your fender twin into a variac, starving the amp for juice, start jammin' away, and watching the valves melt in front of your eyes.


except maybe the sound that comes out of the amp afterwards.

Re:How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[Kris_J]

If the best audio equipment uses tubes, does that mean your computer will crash less if it uses tubes instead of transistors?

No, just if it uses anything instead of Windows. *rimshot*

Re:How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[ncc74656]

52 years old... If they restore it to actual operational status I'll bet they don't run it for very long at a time. Spare tubes and such are gonna be a bear to find.

Tubes aren't as hard to come by as you might think. Lots of companies are still selling 'em. The biggest of 'em is Antique Electronic Supply in Arizona; a couple of others I can think of off the top of my head are CWest Tubes in Utah and Fair Radio Sales in Ohio. The audiophooles have driven the prices of some types (especially power triodes) through the roof, but many types still sell for just a few dollars each, including (IIRC) the 12A_7 types that boatanchor computers more than likely would've used by the gross. (If they're interested in economizing, they could retrofit the machine to use some of the goofball tube types developed for TV use, which are dirt-cheap...but since they're working with a one-of-a-kind machine, they probably don't want to hack it up too badly.)

In fact, I've heard from some people that it's actually harder to fix old transistor radios than it is to fix similar equipment built with tubes, since early transistors have become scarcer than hens' teeth. Early ICs can be equally hard to come by (some talk came up in comp.sys.apple2 a while back about the feasibility of reproducing the Apple I from schematics, and someone noted that some of the chips used in that machine's design are no longer available.

With all that said, the machine would more than likely be on static display most of the time. They might fire it up for special occasions or just to verify that it still works, but I doubt they'll have it participating in GIMPS 24/7. :-)

Re:How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[chadmulligan]

I wanna know if they'd put it on the 'net, assuming of course they could find implementors for the necessary software.

768 words (see specs) would probably be a tight fit, but the tough part would be the hardware... serial ports did not appear until much later.

The first computer I programmed on, an IBM 1401 with 4K (decimal) core RAM, which was from a later generation - transistors and so forth - didn't have any serial ports either. Even when the IBM/360 came out, serials were a separate (and costly!) option... something like $10K for a 300-baud port, IIRC.

Of course, you could bit-bang data to one of the panel lights - or byte-bang 8 of them, come to think of it... but even so I doubt you could find any workable TCP/IP implementation in there.

Re:How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, valve based computers are much more reliable than transistors - AFAIK, the Soviets stayed with valve technology for their nuclear control computers, because Valves are much more resistant to background radiation than transistors. The problem is the physical size, and power consumption (though not, as many people will say, fragility - valves can be made a lot sstronger physically than the ones you see on guitar amps and old radios.)

Re:How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[h2odragon]

Allright, ye've shown me up as the lazy reptile I am. TCP/IP is out, I grant. Thanks for the link. Note also that it has 2K words of disk. We can bounce back a light static page to an HTTP request or reasonable fake, and put it on the web if not the 'net. 1k op/sec will not survive the slashdot effect, unless we can get Mel on it.

20 bit word size? That'll make things a little tougher unless it's good at bit banging. I have faith in the perverse genius of the folks who do things like text mode quake ("it's for the blind, Pops, really...") to do anything they want to see done.

Let's not drag an ugly fact across this discussion by mentioning I/O. I was raised on Intel; "We don't need no steenking I/O..." Besides, a working fake serial port can't be that hard, and having the hardware hacked to do new stuff was obviously a part of this machine's operational life, so it's not like we're betraying it's memory by taking a soldering iron to it.

(...been up waaaay too long now...)

Re:How long 'til it hits the 'net?

[TheGeek]

I kinda thought he wanted to surf with it, not surf to it.

Can you imagine surfing via punchcard?

TheGeek
http://www.geekrights.org

Units

[Gromer]

I think they mean 30 kilowatt-hours per hour

Or, in other words, 30 kilowatts? :-)

Your point is well-taken, though. 30 kilowatts per hour is a pretty meaningless quantity.

Re:Units

[osguzzler]

See how everyone jumps to conclusions? The article says kilowatts per hour, i.e., kilojoules per hour squared, so it's obvious they're talking about an acceleration: every hour the machine stays connected, its power demand goes up by 30 kilowatts. This is because in the early days of computing, they knew how to store stuff in memory but didn't know how to remove it, so the memory kept piling up and consuming more and more kilowatts - sorry, kilojoules. Also, valves/lamps/tubes take a long time to warm up,so this also has some incidence on the power consumption. Also, the little prongs on the punching machine get more and more blunt as you go on, so they need more energy to pierce the paper or cardboard (they don't specify whether it uses tape or cards). There are a whole lot of similar factors to take into account - so stop degrading reporters who obviously know much more about their subject than all of you smart-arsed nerds! ( :-) )

Re:Units

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you calculated how long it will take before this thing sucks _all_ the world's energy resources dry? What will hit us first - Y2K or the joule-vampire computer? :-)

kilowatt-hours per hour?

[Anonymous Coward]

They say it uses 30 kilowatts per hour; I think they mean 30 kilowatt-hours per hour.

It runs at 30 kW, eh? Seems to be a more convinient way of saying the same thing, rather than using the energy unit kWh derived from the power unit kW (or W) and then express the power as kWh/h. Such clumsy expressions just because someone decided that joule was not an acceptable measure of energy for commercial electricity. Sigh.

Re:kilowatt-hours per hour?

[HardCase]

Such clumsy expressions just because someone decided that joule was not an acceptable measure of energy for commercial electricity.

It's not a matter of being acceptable or not. A watt isn't a joule. A watt is a measure of energy used per unit time...dJ/dt, or 1 joule per second.

We use the term watt just like we use the term amp (or ampere). Just as it's easier to express current as amps instead of coulombs per second, it's a matter of convenience to use watts instead of joules per second.

Now if you really want to get cranky over something, how about the ridiculous English measurement system???

52 years old?

[LocalEmperor]

Well if the museum doesn't want it, we can always give it to our public schools. They are in need of an upgrade.

LocalEmperor

Re:52 years old?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shamelessly taken from The Simpsons

Gil: [appearing suddenly] D'ah, she's a beut'. You can't beat a Coleco, eh ...? How many can I put ya' down for, a lot? Please say "a lot," I need this.

Re:52 years old?

[Jimbo123]

LOOK DADDY, I'M LEARNEDING!
-Ralph Wiggums, esquire

Re:52 years old?

[Kris_J]

And decent heating.

The truth.

[Matt2000]

There's a truth about the first computers that people rarely discuss anymore, and its about time somebody set the record straight.

We all know that most of the first computers didn't work at all, they were little more than great empty cabinets with flashing lights. The real truth on how they computed isn't rooted in the development of the vacuum tube or the transistor, it was due to the hundreds of midgets who lived inside the machine and worked day and night on mathematics problems.

Those first computers had to be built to confuse the ruskies, we all agree on that, but at what cost? What was the human toll in pushing those little guys faster and faster, first 1000 times faster than regular humans, then millions of times. Those first years were lessons in heat dissipation of a different sort, let me tell you 720 midgets in a box need a special kind of cooling.

Let's not let history slip from our memories and cause us to forget the real, tiny heroes of the information age.

Hotnutz.com

Re:The truth.

[Haven]

I remember these days well. Our overclocking devices were jolt cola and crystal methane.

Break out the Alpha coolers

[Oscarfish]

Let's buy 1000 P3125 Alpha Coolers and overclock this thing to Kingdom Come!

Re:Break out the Alpha coolers

[Jonathan the Nerd]

Yeah, maybe if we overclock it enough we can get it up to the level of a microwave controller! (Actually, with all the heat this thing generates, we can probably dispense with the microwave entirely.)

Heh. A cheap PIC can probably emulate it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a 16F84, and even that could probably blow it away. And on microwatts of power.

Re:Heh. A cheap PIC can probably emulate it.

[dburr]

Yeah, but a chip PIC doesn't look cool and massive and (most important of all) have gazillions of blinkenlights and dials and switches and whatnot encrusting it...

Russia is a good source of tubes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also Czechoslovakia and Poland. At least that's where all the tubes I mail order (for xmitter RF finals) seem to come from. For really high power applications, tubes are still a superrior choice to FETs. Tubes can withstand static and full shorts that would fry the FET finals on a 1.5 kW transmitter.

Re:Russia is a good source of tubes.

[Vacuum]

I was getting valves for my amps from a supplier that purchased a russian product and added thier logo, from what I was told up until recently alot of the former soviet radar and listening installations used valves

Re:Russia is a good source of tubes.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is a valve?

Re:Russia is a good source of tubes.

[Tau Zero]

"Valve" is another term for vacuum tube.
--
Advertisers: If you attach cookies to your banner ads,

Re:Russia is a good source of tubes.

[C.Lee]

>What is a valve?
Valve is the UK term for vacuum tube.

First Synth

[MrCreosote]

Not only was CSIRAC the 4th stored program computer in the world, and oldest surviving, it was also probably the first computer to generate music

Another article on the same machine

[chrisb]

See also
http://technology.news.com.au/news/4280542.htm

for a somewhat more complete story.

Chris

No I don't work for news limited :)

first-generation electronic computer

[Mazzella!]

The article goes into little detail about the archetecture, other than saying it has 1024 bytes, or 1k of RAM. How much was it a tube computer, electronic switching computer or what else?

If it was a tube computer, could you imagine the heat of 40 meters square of tubes and switches would generate! I though my area was warm with 2 21" and 2 17" tubes a-blazing!

Re:first-generation electronic computer

[Anonymous Coward]

and first generation storage was done with things
like mercury delay tubes - not even mag drums or
paper tape... just *maybe* it has a punched card
interface to 1940's ibm hollerith card readers...
if you want it on the net, you program the tcp/ip
in machine binary, or try to fit gcc into 1kb of
core... now, there's a *real* challenge for the
kernel hackers... that is, *after* you figure out
the machine language by reverse engineering
its signal response, since there may well be
no documentation left....

Re:first-generation electronic computer

[MrCreosote]

Bzzzzt - see comment above for link to details of available doco

Re:first-generation electronic computer

[Slamtilt]

That 1024 bytes figure is a bit misleading, too. According to the technical specs (here) it had a 20-bit word size, and could hold 768 words in memory at once. So, in terms of bits, it manages to beat my ZX81 quite handily.

Melbourne

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be MelboUrne.
I know you americans have something against the letter u..

it's melbourne...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's melbourne u sydney luvn bastard !!! >:|

Ebay time

[sunnyd85]

Sounds intresting. I'm expecting to see something pop up on eBay any day now :) I'd like to see if they can actually get it to work. Probably will light on fire the first time they turn it on. The amount of money there going to need to spend on burnt out tubes might just be a bit more then it's worth. Guess we'll just have to see.

A contradiction?

[]Ace[]

Mr. Demant said:

"It's the only first-generation computer left on this planet. As the years go by I believe its significance will increase."

I thought the ENIAC (older than 1947) was preserved by the US government?
Hmm...

Please visit FreeDonation.com - You can donate Food and Medicine for FREE to Save Children. The donation is fully paid by corporate sponsors with the money they would have spent anyway on advertising. There is no charge to you.

Re:A contradiction?

[David F.]

The ENIAC is in pieces, which are scattered everywhere.. I know this since one piece of it sits about 500 yards away from me right now at the University of Michigan.

Re:A contradiction?

[]Ace[]

Thank you for the enlightening bit :)

Re:A contradiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about 'Baby' at Manchester Uni. They rebuilt it a couple of years ago. The FIRST stored program computer.

How many nerds does it take...

[raygundan]

The comment above this one finally hits the nail on the head, with one small caveat. Saying either kWh/h or kW/h is silly. But kW/h is wrong, and kWh/h is ACTUALLY CORRECT, as silly as it may seem. Look at your electric bill. Mine gives my energy usage in kWh/day, which is the same d@mn thing as kWh/h, with a time conversion. It is also correct to say that the machine uses 30kW. This is akin to saying that it uses an average power (or, less likely, a perfectly constant power) of 30kW.

Re:How many nerds does it take...

[yong321]

Theoretically, saying kW/h is not incorrect (even though the original poster probably made it wrong indeed). It means the change of power with time. Think about 10 miles per hour per second. If a car has this acceleration, it can go from 0 to 10 mph in 1 second.

Yong Huang

Somewhat off-topic...

[Ford Prefect]

Another old computer that was rebuilt...

http://www.computer50.org/

Interesting because it was the world's first stored program machine, was programmed by Alan Turing, and was built just down the road from where I am at the moment.

And best of all, there are emulators and programs you can download for it... :)

Details

[MrCreosote]

Details of CSIRAC can be found here

Also, documentation is available (not online) here

Good Quake machine?

[EverCode]

Would this thing get near 200 FPS in Quake?

Or does it just output to paper?

From one extreme to another...

E

Re:Good Quake machine?

[MrCreosote]

Does Quake run with 16x20 graphics???

Re:Good Quake machine?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was talking about paper tape quake.

Vacuum tubes

[mouseman]

Spare tubes and such are gonna be a bear to find.

I went to a symposium a year or so ago on the Sage system -- the first world's first air defense computer system. As a backdrop to the talks, there was this huge wall of vacuum tubes that was actually a tiny piece of the computer. Someone pointed out that all those tubes were actually quite valuable -- audiophiles are willing to pay a small fortune for them. One of the speakers at the symposium, Paul Edwards, wrote The Closed World, which discusses the role of the Cold War in the development of computer technology.

hook it up to the web

[PG13]

they should hook this thing up to the web....well at least oint a web came at it!

Then have it run a vending machine or some such...it would be an interesting piece of notsalgia to get your coke from a 1950's computer

30 kiloWatt-hours per hour?

[adolf]

30 kiloWatt-hours per hour?

More like 30kW. Plain and simple. Sheesh...

Port linux to it..

[Anonymous Coward]

It is really suprising to me that no one here has suggested porting linux to it... I know it's a stupid idea, but this is slashdot... :)

I HATE the friggin' "unit" kilowatt-hour

[Anonymous Coward]

Kilowatt hour is THE STUPIDEST UNIT (well except for anything in the Imperial System) I can possibly think of (Energy/Time)*Time. I wish power companies charged you by the Megajoule. What is the WORST, is those ratings on refrigerators that say kilowatt-hours per year, I mean [(Energy/Time)*Time]/Time?!?! That's Fucking moronic!!

hmm?

[Byzantine]

My only questions is how big a "standard sized room" is.

wtf?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is this jamie person who has started posting inane things? First I see something about what kind of game is worse than another, then an inane posting about a journalist trying to become a geek, now this idiocy over units... Did I miss the intro posting?

Re:wtf?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, I think there should be an Inane section of slashdot run by jamie to go with the BSD, Ask Slashdot and Your Rights Online sections.

Port Linux to it

[strlen]

Port Linux to it, if NetBSD hasn't yet been ported to it. We have to beat NetBSD in the number of most useless platforms out OS has been ported to!

My Bill (Re:kilowatt-hours/hour?)

[Forge]

My Bill ( And I'm not saying JPS is something to emulate ) lists.

1: How many dollars they charge per Kilowatt hour.

2: How many Kilowatt hours you use.

3: How many other vindictive gratuitous charges they feel like adding on.

So yes for scientists Kilowatt/Hour/Hour is correct. For persons simply paying an electricity bill ( the apparent context of the comment in this article ) it's 30 kWh at $1 per kWh = $21600 per month.

Re:My Bill (Re:kilowatt-hours/hour?)

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick. Kilowatt-hour is kilowatt TIMES hour, not PER hour. A Watt is a Joule per second, for you unitary(sp?) challenged people, so kilowatt is Joule*calculate-this-unitless-constant-yourself, and kilowatt-hour per hour is just kilowatt (hour cancels out).

Your typical lightbulb is 0.1 kilowatt. If you leave it on for 10 hours, you'll pay for one kilowatt*hour. And so on.

This beast is 30 kilowatt = 300 lightbulbs.

CSIRAC

[goon]

• a Sunday Age (Melborne) article which describes the discovery of a 52 year old computer found in a dusty warehouse weighing in at 2,000 kilograms.

This should read 'Melbourne'. I would have put it up sooner, but I typed in http://segfault.org by mistake :) Here's a better link fairfax IT section.

• Because the tunes were first played between 1951 and 1953, Doornbusch is confident it was probably the first computer music anywhere.

An interesting fact that would be nice to confirm is that the played the worlds first computer generated music. I've heard the tape on the ABC's Science show (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/ss.htm) last year.

• In 1948 he, with Maston Beard, commenced the design of a stored program electronic computer. This machine, the CSIR Mark I, was developed largely independently of work then underway in Britain and the US.

There's also a link to the machines co-creator, Trevor Pearcey

• http://www.pearcey.org.au/
• 
  http://www.pearcey.org.au/obituary.html

It will be good to go and have a peek and listen.

Good to see they had their priorities right

[MrCreosote]

I would especially like to see

4/10 Computer Games

This item contains a paper entitled 'A Few Remarks On The Games Which Can Be Played On Digital Computers. Part 1', by NV Findler, at the FBS Falkiner Nuclear Research and Adolph Basser Computing Laboratories, School of Physics, University of Sydney.

File contents includes: published papers.

1958c - 1958c, 0.3cm.

Whoa, Mercury Delay Line Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's a new one on me, I've heard of delay line memory, but not Mercury Delay Line Memory. Computer memory systems are a fascinating topic, some of the methods used to store data is amazing. Though I must say, I think this is the first time I've ever heard of a computer component that had to be kept HOT!

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a Core Stack to finish troubleshooting.

Re:Whoa, Mercury Delay Line Memory

[sotweed]

Several early computers used mercury for memory. It was heated because it needed to be kept at a uniform and constant temp, and that was the easiest way. The Univac I also used mercury. Every few months it had to be replaced because of accumulated schmutz. The old stuff was sold and, I'm told, financed some pretty good parties...

Re:Whoa, Mercury Delay Line Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, pretty funky stuff :) IIRC it was developed for use in RADAR systems, to act as a buffer between the CRT & the incoming RADAR signals. The data was held in the delay line by converting it into a sonic signal and then transmitting it along the tube of mercury. The density of the mercury meant that the signals were slowed between the transmitter and reciever, and could be bounced back & forth along the line of the tube.

The acuracy of this post if questionable, i`m doing this all from memory :)

Re:Whoa, Mercury Delay Line Memory

[steveroehrs]

This sounds just like the computer that Waterhouse was building in Cryptonomicon - in Brisbane, AUSTRALIA! It used mercury delay lines for memory too (and made a hell of a racket when it was running!) Maybe Neal Stephenson was on to something here...

even better: crt memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Get this: another form of early computer memory involved combining CRT's and photocells to persist 'dots' on the computer screen to store data. the fact that the phospor took time to fade gave the beam sweep enough time to read the fading dot with the photocell and re-paint the spot if needed. sheesh!

Re:even better: crt memory

[dingbat_hp]

Wilson tubes, and they didn't even need photocells. The "spot" was read as a charge, not by its brightness.

They worked better in the dark, but for debugging you could swing the door over the tube face open and read the dots directly off the screen.

Anyone else remember why "0" has a slash through it ? 8-)

Re:even better: crt memory

[198348726583297634]

Now I'm curious... why does the '0' have a slash through it?

Re:even better: crt memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Turing's Colossus, and some of the later Manchester equipment, was made out of telex machine parts that couldn't print a distinction between 0 (zero) and O (big letter o). Instead of 0, code listings were printed with /. Hand corrections put the 0 in place, giving us the traditional "slash-zero" (hey, cool name for a weblog!)

30kW/h means it accellerates

[Belgarion]

Just like 9.8 m/s/s means you're dropping to Earth 1 m/s faster each second, 1 kW/h means that it uses 1 kW more each hour.

So after one hour of operation, the machine will use 30 kW more than when it started. So after a day of use, it's running at at least 720kW.

Re:30kW/h means it accellerates

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap, by the end of the year, that baby is gonna need its own nuclear reactor!

Computer Being Restored

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't realize that any computer beings existed.

Re:Computer Being Restored

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm working well. Saddly though, my pet mouse crawled into my left ankle and died.

Re:How many nerds does it take... [Another]

[Art Sackett]

But kW/h is wrong, and kWh/h is ACTUALLY CORRECT, as silly as it may seem.

Nah, it ain't so. kWh/h is a delta parameter, like acceleration. kW/h is a measure of the rate of power consumption, and is correct in the given context.

The possible extrapolations of this are left as an excercise to the reader. Just don't tell anyone you're doing it if you wish to avoid being labeled as a pathetic creature ;-)

It is not being restored to working condition.

[Trongy]

According to an article that appeared in the Melbourne Age IT section a few weeks ago, it's not being restored to working condition. It is being placed on display at Scienceworks Museum, hence the current publicity.

The article stated that it was at most the fifth computer (electronic with stored programs)in the world and the oldest surviving.

Chris

Re:Hey there!

[Anonymous Coward]

No!

??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yer DED!

Some information

[Goonie]

I'm a postgrad student in the CS department Melbourne University, where several people who were involved with CSIRAC still work. There are a couple of misconceptions here on Slashdot(which I don't recall being in the article, BTW).

1. IMHO, there is no possibility of the machine EVER being fired up again, unfortunately. While it's a nice dream, it's likely that trying to restart the thing would do nothing but cause a large fire. These are 50-year-old vacuum tubes, people!
2. I believe that n emulator has been written for it, and many of the original programs (on paper tape) have been saved and run on the emulator.
3. The machine WILL be displayed publically in Melbourne, probably at the new Museum of Victoria that's just about completed. This will complement Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, which has a piece of Babbage's Difference Engine.

It's a fascinating device to look at - at first glance, it looks like a piece of old radar junk you'd find in a disposals store, until you talk to some of the people who understand the thing. It all starts to make sense then - the mercury tube memory is particularly clever. Even more fascinating is some of the software written for it, such as the "autocoder" program which looks suspiciously like a proto-compiler, written at or before the same time as FORTRAN and COBOL.

Check out this CSIRAC site.

Records of CSIRAC

[Anonymous Coward]

A guide to the records of CSIRAC is available at:

http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/p ubs/guides/csirac/

Including a link to the CSIRAC simulator.

Robin

Wonder if it is

[jamesbently]

I wonder if it is running a monolithic kernel. [Cymbal crash]

Re:Wonder if it is

[Anonymous Coward]

the kernel in full, as you can see it is a micro kernel and thus far superior to that huge cra.. kernel in both linux and windows

while (power_is_on || no_div_by_zero)
{
temp_storage=do_input();
no_div_by_zero=do_output(temp_storage);
}
else
blow_a_tube();

Re:How many nerds does it take... [Another]

[Glenn R-P]

} >But kW/h is wrong, and kWh/h is ACTUALLY CORRECT, as silly as it may seem.
} Nah, it ain't so. kWh/h is a delta parameter, like acceleration. kW/h is a measure of the rate
} of power consumption, and is correct in the given context.

Good grief. kW is a measure of rate of power consumption. kWh is total power consumed. kWh/h is the same as kW.

If kWh/h = kW, how is it a delta? *sigh*

[raygundan]

Oh, so close. kWh/h isn't a delta... kW/h is. As in "The power usage is increasing by 5 kW/h." It is VERY simple to see how the hours cancel out of kWh/h-- how can it be a delta with no time in it? *sigh*. That is precisely why kW/h is wrong in this situation. They are using a delta to describe a constant.

If kWh/h = kW, how can it be a delta?

[raygundan]

Oh, so close. kWh/h isn't a delta... kW/h is. As in "The power usage is increasing by 5 kW/h." It is VERY simple to see how the hours cancel out of kWh/h-- how can it be a delta with no time in it? *sigh*. That is precisely why kW/h is wrong in this situation. They are using a delta to describe a constant. My apologies to the other comment I accidentally posted this under-- I believe he has the right idea.

Please ignore the double post...

[raygundan]

Well... I apparently don't know my behind from the "submit" button here. Watch as the brilliant raygundan posts comments twice in the same place, and thinks they're different!

It is stupid to restore this.

[segmond]

I think it is stupid and a waste of time and money to restore this. Regardless of if it runs or not, its purpose is simply to be a muesum piece. The vast majority of the people out there, just want to see the beast, and not in action. If people will like to see it in action, an emulator will be better. Besides, I doubt you get to see on the console and play with it, So why waste the time and money? When I see the Altair, I just like to see it, I don't care if it runs, I don't have time to fiddle with those buttons, I have real work to do, not play with an antique that is taking me no where. But then again, I digress, I just restored a sun/30, heh, but at least it runs Unix! (NetBSD/OpenBSD), and is still useable. :-)

distributed.net

[renegade187]

Thats what it should do...Crack code.

Unless...

It has a spot for a voodoo3 in it...i smell quake...or is that burning silicon?

Uptime Consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting conundrum. Assuming the power rate number given is positive, this thing would be consuming a megawatt after about 33 hours. The tube glow should be easily visible from space. Now if the thing runs linux, Microsoft has an excellent PR opportunity.

Specs and PIcutre of the machine.

[Thomas Charron]

Specs for the CSIRAC (Hyperlink is to picture of the machine) can be found Here. Includes specs for the memory, drum storage devices, etc..

Is there going to be a Linux port for this thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

No comment

very nice...but one nit

[mackga]

I have with the article, to wit:
"By today's standards it was not aesthetically pleasing. CSIRAC was bulky, covering 40 square metres, and sported dozens of grey metal cabinets covered with dials, switches and gauges. Colored lights adorned its panels and inside was a mass of wires and more switches."

Well, I think it sounds pretty damned sexy looking. Wouldn't mind having this my my garage!

Neither

[kcarnold]

Good luck fitting it into 1k! The networking code, whatever that would mean for such a computer, would alone take up at least that much.

Does it matter?

[kcarnold]

We all know what the author means. Why waste your time arguing about it? I know what it is but I'm not telling.

ken

Try It

[kcarnold]

Get a kernel that fits in 1k. But first, figure out how to compile for it.

What useless platforms has Linux been ported to anyway?

Why don't metric-heads express weight in Newtons?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What do you weigh?"
"About 50 kg"

Urrrgh! Then again at the doctor's office (in the US) the "mass" scale measures "pounds". Double urrgh!

OS

[passion]

can linux be ported to it? :)

how could you forget this one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it y2k compliant?

-That guy

Oldest? not! MARK I

[Anonymous Coward]

Harvard has a system that's older, and it actually works. Its called 'Mark I', its completely electromechanical. Best of all, they run it three times a day and you can just walk in and see it. Its in the lobby of the Science Center.

Why don't journalists do some research when they write an article? Lots of computers can claim to be the oldest. Jeez.

kilowatt-hours per hours

[Anonymous Coward]

kilowatts * hours / hours = kilowatts. it's the same watts as in lightbulbs and washing machines specs. like, most desktop computers are using 200-300 watts these days. other useful references: original ibm-pc-g was a 65 watt thingie; pc jr uses less, and a colour computer (radio shack) is certainly half than that, with its fully plastic case and no fan.

Read your electric bill

[DragonHawk]

no, kilowatt is a measure of power, which is energy per time. so kilowatts per hour is energy per time^2

It has been long enough since I took a science course that I can't remeber the science aspect of all these formula (formuli? formulas?). But I do have to worry about my electric bill, so I know how this works.

Watts is how much juice it takes to run something. (I say "juice" because I can't remember if the technical term is power or energy or what.) For example, a 100 watt lightbulb means it draws 100 watts whenever it is turned on.

The watt-hour is a measure of power usage. If you run a 100 watt lightbulb for an hour, you just used 100 watt-hours. If you run a 50-watt lightbulb for two hours, you still use 100 watt-hours.

This is how the power company bills you. If the only thing in your house is a space heater that draws 1000 watts, running it all the time will use 24000 watt-hours, or 2.4 kilowatt-hours, per day. If you run two of them, you will use 4.8 kw*h per day. The "hours" in "kilowatt-hours" is a theoretical hour, not a real-time hour.

Thus, I would assume CSIRAC draws 30 kilowatts of power whenever it is turned on. I suppose you could say it uses 30 kW an hour -- if you leave it on for an hour. :) Leave it on for two hours, and it will have used 60 kW*h. Use it only for half an hour, and you only use 15 kW*h. Get the idea?

Restored != Made operational

[DragonHawk]

IMHO, there is no possibility of the machine EVER being fired up again, unfortunately. While it's a nice dream, it's likely that trying to restart the thing would do nothing but cause a large fire. These are 50-year-old vacuum tubes, people!

It is worth pointing out that "restored" does not mean "made operational". Restoration could simply mean dusting it off and replacing gaping holes in the front panels so that it looks like it did when it was operational.

Re:friggin' "unit" kilowatt-hour

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all about conversions, to 'keep it simple, stupid'. Naturally, what matters to people that actually pay for their energy is rates that are easily convertible to dollars. It's the engineering types who insist on measuring Volts and Amperes that require you to use Watts somewhere in the billing calculation. I suppose the power company could do the same thing as the water supply company: the water meter measures cubic meters, which is stated on the bill in kilolitres, and use a conversion to get hundreds of cubic feet. This is commensurable[?] with the billing rate ($ per cubic foot).