Computer Museum at Bletchley Park
I have long wanted to write about my visit to Bletchley Park , which was presented to me by my girlfriend for my birthday. The final push was given by a recent post , but unlike begoon , I almost did not see the park itself, but I spent a lot of time in the computer museum of The National Museum of Computing , located in one of its buildings, which I want to talk about in this Friday post.
Carefully, traffic is hiding under the cut!
')
At the entrance to the museum we are greeted by Next Cube . It is strange to realize that at one time it was worth a fortune, and today it is quietly covered with dust in the corridor:
In the first room are collected (and immediately repaired) huge electromechanical monsters. There is an indescribable smell of old age and engine oil.
For example, Automatic Verifier Punch of an unknown model. Initially, one operator used it to pierce holes in punch cards using the numeric keypad in the lower right corner. After that, another operator transferred the machine to the verification mode, in which the piercing head was slightly shifted, and entered the same data again. If there were no errors, the existing holes simply widened out a bit, if there were errors, two holes appeared in the same column at the same time.
Result of work:
Electronic Multiplier Punch - electromechanical calculator. From punched cards, he read the input data, the sequence of mathematical operations that need to be performed, as well as the required format of the output data. After that, he, in fact, performed the necessary operations, puncturing the result in a punched card and handed it to the output. One can only imagine with what speed and noise all this happened.
Also something impressive:
Further, in the showcase in the corridor, you can see a small exposition of counting devices of different times, starting with such monsters (a calculating machine with the saying name " Millionaire " of 1895. The first commercially successful calculator that could perform multiplication directly, rather than through a series of additions, thanks to was popular until the 1930s.):
or such ( Monroe counting machine):
and to more familiar to us exhibits:
Here is also a curious Cambridge Z88 , a portable computer based on the Z80 processor, which, at A4 paper size and 900 grams of weight, provided a full-sized keyboard, an office suite and BASIC. True, he was a little unlucky with the screen.
The DEC PDP-11/34 turned out to be in a small room with, as far as can be judged, all possible peripherals. PDP-11 was created in the 70s and was the successor of the successful PDP-8. The heart was a 16-bit processor, input / output was carried out using punched tape or a connected terminal. The computer supported a large number of operating systems of both the DOS family and UNIX. Among the latter - DEMOS , Dialogue Unified Mobile Operating System, the Soviet clone UNIX.
Terminal VT420 is connected to the PDP-11, which, however, was created much later than the computer itself - in 1990. Unfortunately, neither the terminal nor the computer itself worked, although it was obvious that everything was in perfect working order.
This is followed by the main hall of the museum, which is filled with working, noisy and buzzing computers from the 60s-80s. In addition to the relatively few visitors in the hall, a large number of museum staff who are engaged in restoration, most of them are volunteers.
The main exhibit of the hall is Elliott 803 , the restoration of which is currently one of the main projects of the museum. This model is one of two cars that have survived to our times. The computer was created in the late 50s - early 60s, had a memory on magnetic cores and occupied several cabinets, in which the computing device, memory, and power supply unit with an integrated backup battery were located. Input / output was carried out using a teletype, as well as punched tape.
Due to the size of the car, it was impossible to make a normal photo of all the cabinets, so I insert the Elliot 803 found on the Internet with connected peripherals:
One of the cabinets on the working machine. The computer is constantly on, but is in debug mode:
One of the printed circuit boards used in the computer. As seen in the previous photo, the machine has a modular structure, which allows you to remove / replace the boards if necessary.
Complete Tape Reader
and Tape Punch, both automatic (note, the entire pallet is packed with thousands of puncture holes),
and also punched tape itself:
One of the unusual features of the Elliott 803 was the use of perforated 35 mm film for storing information. At 300 meters of film placed 1.27meters megabytes of information.
And finally, the place of the administrator. You can see the teletype, management console, a thick manual, as well as a modern computer. Fedora is installed on the computer and it is somehow (TTY emulated?) Associated with Elliott, which allows you to debug directly from it.
WITCH (Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell), a decatron computer built in 1949-1951, is being restored in the next hall. The museum itself states that after the restoration WITCH will be the oldest computer in the world.
But back to the main hall, which is also rich in other exhibits. So, there is a fully restored and working Elliott 903 , the connected VT220 cycles between the major cities of the world. Green letters on a black screen - a fascinating sight.
Next - samples of magnetic disks of different generations. “Washing machines” in the background are storage devices on magnetic disks. As I learned only now, during the preparation of this post, they are all connected to one mainframe - ICL 2966 , which occupies the main area of ​​the main hall of the museum.
There is also an ICL 7501 terminal, which seems to be connected just to this ICL 2966. At the terminal, anyone can play a text adventure.
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 ...
CPU load indicator of one of the computers.
That would be to steal, just 4 cores ..
This sysadmin next to the disassembled guts Elliott 803 . Photos only from the back - I did not want to tear a person away from work.
Surprisingly, all the museum staff are ready to talk about their systems as much as they like and answer visitors' questions. A colleague of this sysadmin, engaged in the restoration of Elliot 903, told me many details about these systems, of which I, unfortunately, understood little and remembered - this iron is too different from the modern one.
We continue the journey. In a separate gaming room, several computers and consoles were assembled on which the games of that era were launched, you can just sit and play for fun:
In the last hall of the museum there are also many interesting exhibits. For example, a prototype of a modern tablet:
And here is the HP 250 , a business model from Hewlett Packard, built into the table. The computer came in from the early 80s and had an internal hard drive and floppy disk drive.
Next to him is the 1992 Cray Y-MP EL supercomputer. EL - Entry Level, a cheaper and less powerful version of the Cray Y-MP. Compared to conventional Cray Y-MP, this weighs some 635 kilograms and does not require water cooling. The computer supports up to 4 processors and from 32 to 1024 MB of memory.
The last hall of the museum is dedicated to the education of children. It has a whole computer class set up on the basis of the BBC Micro , the most popular home computer model in Britain in the 80s, the British counterpart of Apple II.
An interesting feature of the computer class is that the BBC Domesday Project is running on every computer. The project with the good name "Book of the Last Judgment" is a large-scale BBC project to conduct a "people's census" of the population of Britain. Through the efforts of more than a million people, mostly schoolchildren, all possible information was collected about the geography, history, and social situation of various regions of the country. All this was generously flavored with multi-colored maps, photographs, video clips and statistics. And this is all - in 1986! The project was distributed on two LaserDisc disks, each side of a single disk contained 300 MB of information. In the photo - such a disk in the drive, the scale can be roughly estimated by the journal lying next to it.
Finally, before the very exit from the museum, a VT320 is installed, from which you can connect to a real BBS. The illusion of complete authenticity spoils the inscription BBS for Win32 a little.
Thanks to everyone who read and good Friday everyone!
Carefully, traffic is hiding under the cut!
')
At the entrance to the museum we are greeted by Next Cube . It is strange to realize that at one time it was worth a fortune, and today it is quietly covered with dust in the corridor:
In the first room are collected (and immediately repaired) huge electromechanical monsters. There is an indescribable smell of old age and engine oil.
For example, Automatic Verifier Punch of an unknown model. Initially, one operator used it to pierce holes in punch cards using the numeric keypad in the lower right corner. After that, another operator transferred the machine to the verification mode, in which the piercing head was slightly shifted, and entered the same data again. If there were no errors, the existing holes simply widened out a bit, if there were errors, two holes appeared in the same column at the same time.
Result of work:
Electronic Multiplier Punch - electromechanical calculator. From punched cards, he read the input data, the sequence of mathematical operations that need to be performed, as well as the required format of the output data. After that, he, in fact, performed the necessary operations, puncturing the result in a punched card and handed it to the output. One can only imagine with what speed and noise all this happened.
Also something impressive:
Further, in the showcase in the corridor, you can see a small exposition of counting devices of different times, starting with such monsters (a calculating machine with the saying name " Millionaire " of 1895. The first commercially successful calculator that could perform multiplication directly, rather than through a series of additions, thanks to was popular until the 1930s.):
or such ( Monroe counting machine):
and to more familiar to us exhibits:
Here is also a curious Cambridge Z88 , a portable computer based on the Z80 processor, which, at A4 paper size and 900 grams of weight, provided a full-sized keyboard, an office suite and BASIC. True, he was a little unlucky with the screen.
The DEC PDP-11/34 turned out to be in a small room with, as far as can be judged, all possible peripherals. PDP-11 was created in the 70s and was the successor of the successful PDP-8. The heart was a 16-bit processor, input / output was carried out using punched tape or a connected terminal. The computer supported a large number of operating systems of both the DOS family and UNIX. Among the latter - DEMOS , Dialogue Unified Mobile Operating System, the Soviet clone UNIX.
Terminal VT420 is connected to the PDP-11, which, however, was created much later than the computer itself - in 1990. Unfortunately, neither the terminal nor the computer itself worked, although it was obvious that everything was in perfect working order.
This is followed by the main hall of the museum, which is filled with working, noisy and buzzing computers from the 60s-80s. In addition to the relatively few visitors in the hall, a large number of museum staff who are engaged in restoration, most of them are volunteers.
The main exhibit of the hall is Elliott 803 , the restoration of which is currently one of the main projects of the museum. This model is one of two cars that have survived to our times. The computer was created in the late 50s - early 60s, had a memory on magnetic cores and occupied several cabinets, in which the computing device, memory, and power supply unit with an integrated backup battery were located. Input / output was carried out using a teletype, as well as punched tape.
Due to the size of the car, it was impossible to make a normal photo of all the cabinets, so I insert the Elliot 803 found on the Internet with connected peripherals:
One of the cabinets on the working machine. The computer is constantly on, but is in debug mode:
One of the printed circuit boards used in the computer. As seen in the previous photo, the machine has a modular structure, which allows you to remove / replace the boards if necessary.
Complete Tape Reader
and Tape Punch, both automatic (note, the entire pallet is packed with thousands of puncture holes),
and also punched tape itself:
One of the unusual features of the Elliott 803 was the use of perforated 35 mm film for storing information. At 300 meters of film placed 1.27
And finally, the place of the administrator. You can see the teletype, management console, a thick manual, as well as a modern computer. Fedora is installed on the computer and it is somehow (TTY emulated?) Associated with Elliott, which allows you to debug directly from it.
WITCH (Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell), a decatron computer built in 1949-1951, is being restored in the next hall. The museum itself states that after the restoration WITCH will be the oldest computer in the world.
But back to the main hall, which is also rich in other exhibits. So, there is a fully restored and working Elliott 903 , the connected VT220 cycles between the major cities of the world. Green letters on a black screen - a fascinating sight.
Next - samples of magnetic disks of different generations. “Washing machines” in the background are storage devices on magnetic disks. As I learned only now, during the preparation of this post, they are all connected to one mainframe - ICL 2966 , which occupies the main area of ​​the main hall of the museum.
There is also an ICL 7501 terminal, which seems to be connected just to this ICL 2966. At the terminal, anyone can play a text adventure.
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 ...
CPU load indicator of one of the computers.
That would be to steal, just 4 cores ..
This sysadmin next to the disassembled guts Elliott 803 . Photos only from the back - I did not want to tear a person away from work.
Surprisingly, all the museum staff are ready to talk about their systems as much as they like and answer visitors' questions. A colleague of this sysadmin, engaged in the restoration of Elliot 903, told me many details about these systems, of which I, unfortunately, understood little and remembered - this iron is too different from the modern one.
We continue the journey. In a separate gaming room, several computers and consoles were assembled on which the games of that era were launched, you can just sit and play for fun:
In the last hall of the museum there are also many interesting exhibits. For example, a prototype of a modern tablet:
And here is the HP 250 , a business model from Hewlett Packard, built into the table. The computer came in from the early 80s and had an internal hard drive and floppy disk drive.
Next to him is the 1992 Cray Y-MP EL supercomputer. EL - Entry Level, a cheaper and less powerful version of the Cray Y-MP. Compared to conventional Cray Y-MP, this weighs some 635 kilograms and does not require water cooling. The computer supports up to 4 processors and from 32 to 1024 MB of memory.
The last hall of the museum is dedicated to the education of children. It has a whole computer class set up on the basis of the BBC Micro , the most popular home computer model in Britain in the 80s, the British counterpart of Apple II.
An interesting feature of the computer class is that the BBC Domesday Project is running on every computer. The project with the good name "Book of the Last Judgment" is a large-scale BBC project to conduct a "people's census" of the population of Britain. Through the efforts of more than a million people, mostly schoolchildren, all possible information was collected about the geography, history, and social situation of various regions of the country. All this was generously flavored with multi-colored maps, photographs, video clips and statistics. And this is all - in 1986! The project was distributed on two LaserDisc disks, each side of a single disk contained 300 MB of information. In the photo - such a disk in the drive, the scale can be roughly estimated by the journal lying next to it.
Finally, before the very exit from the museum, a VT320 is installed, from which you can connect to a real BBS. The illusion of complete authenticity spoils the inscription BBS for Win32 a little.
Thanks to everyone who read and good Friday everyone!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/147360/
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