On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Lyle Bickley wrote:
On Thursday 10 July 2008, Robert G. Brown wrote:
--snip--
Aye, laddy, 'twas a PDP 1 with sense switches on the front that one did
indeed toggle in the paper tape boot program (to get it to where it
could read from other media), a green oscilloscope-style CRT for a
monitor (complete with crosshatches IIRC), a real teletype console, and
the ability to run simple fortran programs that did beam optic
computations and displayed a simple visualization of same. The PDP
itself was quite large, and I was told that it "had a few bad bits..."
but that they usually didn't affect the outcome of a computation.
I'm on the PDP-1 and IBM 1620 Restoration Teams at the Computer History Museum
(see: http://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/). So if the PDP-1 was your first
computer (and one NEVER forgets their first computer) you can see it in
action (running Spacewar!, Minskytron, Music, etc.) at the CHM!
In fact, if your visiting Silicon Valley, I'll give you a private tour!
Cool! I think TUNL finally got rid of theirs -- always a shame,
somehow, when a magnificent thing like that dies.
Funny combination - setting up Beowulf clusters and restoring vintage
computers. There must be a lesson here :-)
Vintage clusters?
;-)
rgb
Cheers,
Lyle
rgb
--
Robert G. Brown Phone(cell): 1-919-280-8443
Duke University Physics Dept, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Web: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb
Book of Lilith Website: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Lilith/Lilith.php
Lulu Bookstore: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=877977
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