IBM
Visiting the System Source Computer Museum
Visiting the System Source Computer Museum
#Visiting #System #Source #Computer #Museum
“CuriousMarc”
We get a private tour of the System Source Museum near Baltimore, MD. What a gem of a computer museum!
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The Colossus was actually used to crack the Lorentz cypher, rather than Enigma. I would be very interested in a Curious Marc visit to the Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park!
I know of a guy in Upstate New York that has a PDP 8e, an 11, and 12 in his basement that were all operational. Also has all the DEC Service documentstion, a paper tape encoder and reader two or three platter drives. I don't know what the status of them is at this point
5100 and no John Titor references? 😂
these "mini" computers look so epic i saw them in old movies but didn't realise they were supposed to be computers. they look like something you would see in the background of older movies when they were at flight control or a military base. i wish some 80/90s desktop computers had lights and switches like this but that won't be very practical i guess
10:00 That… thing… that doesn't know if it's a calculator or a typewriter is just wonderful.
I remember seeing a similar IBM accounting machine outside my high school dean's office. It was in the waiting area, and when the patch panel was exposed, it was always a temptation to reach over and move some of the jumpers around.
Thanks that was fun…
When Stanford AI was in the foothills, they had an 18 megaword (word = 36 bits) Librascope disk drive, with platters approaching if not exceeding those shown. Lab director Les Earnest has one such platter serving as a coffee table in his living room; I believe another is displayed in Stanford's Margaret Jacks Hall.
wow – what a museum! If I am ever in or near Baltimore…..
This is Cray-Cray!
Nice to see the Bryant "Big Disc"! When I was working in Toronto (1974 – 1993) my employer (the Meteorological Service of Canada) did a lot of business with CNCP Telecommunications, who ran our national network on our behalf. This was a message switching application that was implemented on a pair of Collins C-8500 computers (one operating, one shadowing it on standby). It supported a national centre, eight regional weather forecasting centres, as well as over a hundred weather briefing and weather observing sites on 64 polled circuits, operating at speeds ranging from 110 – 600 bps. Storage was provided by six of the big Bryant drives — slightly newer models than the ones shown in your video (dating from 1967) but with platters that were just as large. You could grip them at the hub, and they would just fit neatly under your arm, allowing you to carry them without dragging them on the floor. Head actuation was hydraulic, via a "drop adder", which had pistons that displaced one, two, four, and eight units of oil to allow the multiple heads (eight per surface, if I recall) to be set to one of sixteen track positions. All of that equipment was fully operational right into the late '80s, although parts were getting hard to come by — mostly scavenged from other organizations as they decommissioned their Collins systems. I spent a lot of time with the CNCP staff at their site, because we were developing a replacement (based on Tandem NonStop systems) to allow CNCP to finally shut down their C-8500s. That occurred in 1988.
What a fantastic place – these guys have such amazing knowledge from the early days of computing. Much respect.
The gold cray board is a work of art. I'm very into goldwork embroidery and part of my brain is trying to work out how to replicate it.
I want to know how much physical area a single bit takes up on that massive platter.
The electronic equipment was real nifty, but I want a monkey calculator!!!
Love this stuff. I have either work with/on or have been close to many of the things you showed. My wife sitting next to me as I watched noticed my enthusiasm.
As an example, working at Univac, I used Univac 418s, the commercial version of the Univac 1218.
Keep up the good work. I watch your videos as soon as I notice a new one.
Ха-ха! У них да же есть "Linotype"! Меня эта машина впечатлила да же больше, чем все компьютеры вместе взятые! Очень элегантный подход для своего времени! Советую посмотреть видео про эту машину! ))
I didn't know that was there.
Brilliant! What a great museum. I have only one complaint: the video was too short, for me anyway.
when engineer was engineer!
Wow! So much more stuff there than is shown on their website. And it's less than an hour from me. I shall most definitely be paying them at least one visit; it may take more than one visit to soak it all in! I'll also need to make sure the IBM 1130 is there and operating before I go (I kept looking for it in the background). That will one visit in itself.
A quick note about the Sperry radar display. The hood was needed to provide a dark environment for the VERY long persistence phosphor of the display. The holes in the sides are for your hands! You used a wax pencil to mark the display to note and track targets. The surface you wrote on was side illuminated and the wax would light up! I worked on early 1980s JRC (Japan Radio Company) radar displays that used similar technology.
Do they have a MAC-16 Lockheed computer? My mother used that to calculate the steel ropes for the elevators in the original World Trade Center so the cars wouldn’t bounce when they came to a stop.
I think this thing ran at one point too
casually turns on a computer that is older than many watching this video
Regarding that 1990s Cray machine @1:10, I saw a couple of those at a private collection a couple of years ago and there's a quite funny story with them. Basically, they had a big emergency stop button on the top middle part where it slants downwards. But they ended up putting a plastic shroud around it because with the machine being around 5 feet tall or so, it ended up being the perfect position for some unknowing colleague to put their elbow right on it when they came to see what was going on in the computer lab!
@16:28 top right corner a SBC that can outperform them all combined together.
16:00 I would re-watch the video with Stan Lebar in the early television museum if someone writes a transcript of it, the audio is really bad.
This looks like a wonderful place to visit. Too bad it's halfway across the planet and I'll likely never get the chance :/
There's so much sexiness in this video, it's hard to contain myself! Thank you so much for the insights Marc! I need to get out there.
As a young person in high school, I got to use a Linotype at school. Hot, smelly, and mechanically cool, I have not forgotten the fun of typing with melted lead lines coming out. I look at all these old machines, recall when all of this was top of the line in computing equipment, even got to use some of them in the 70's. I marvel at how much things have changed over the decades.
The Digibarn Alto was the first video of yours that I watched. Glad to see it has found a new home in Baltimore! Also, I agree with Ken, IBM should've went with 68000. I'm learning x86 assembly now and it's definitely more challenging than learning 6809 or 68000.
8:15 Finally, There's the machine that goes; PING
Cray, Cray and more Cray. You might say Cray-on?
I worked on a LINC at UCLA. The console had 2 DACs that we played music on. I think one of the guys in our club coded Toccatta & Fuge in d-minor on it. The scope tube actually had code you could view the program.
Fantastic!
Visited yesterday. An absolute treasure trove and wonderfully friendly people who gladly spent their time giving me a tour. Do visit if you have a chance!
Tommy Flowers, an engineer at the UK General Post Office, was the main man behind Colossus.