Living computer museum

I finally got to the Living Computer Museum, and took some photos.

The museum is located in such a nondescript gray building without windows in the not very popular area of Seattle.

The museum consists of two halls. The first exhibits minicomputers (mainly manufactured by DEC), personal computers from the 80s and there is a corner of Microsoft. At xx: 15 each hour begins a half-hour tour of the museum.

Minicomputers are so called because they can be accommodated in one room and there is still room for operators. This, for example, DEC PDP-7 , by the way, is the only computer that cannot be touched by visitors: it runs some kind of experiment with a radioactive sample.

It appeared in 1964, used 18-bit machine words and memory on ferrite cores from 4K to 32K words (data from the tablet, Wikipedia claims that the memory expanded to 64K words), 285 KIPS. This copy was used at the University of Oregon in the laboratory of nuclear physics and maintained in a healthy state until the transfer to the museum.

And here is the radioactive sample itself:

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DEC PDP-8 . The first computer that could have been taken home. The process of transporting home can be seen in the photo on the left. There was a performance for placement in the rack and in the desktop. Actually the computer itself is located in the right rack, the section with orange and yellow switches at the teletype level is him. Everything else is the periphery.

Presented in 1970, 12-bit words, memory capacity from 4K to 32K words, 385 KIPS.

Next is the Data General Nova .

It was developed by engineer Edson de Castro, who left DEC after his computer project was rejected in favor of the PDP-11. The computer used 16-bit words and had a memory from 4K to 32K words, 160 KIPS. This computer supported the fashion started by IBM for the size of the word equal powers of two, multiple of 8. Presented in 1969.

A stool standing near a computer invites visitors to play around with buttons and toggle switches. I, unfortunately, came shortly before the closure of the museum and did not have time to figure out how it works. But someone before me had enough time:

DEC PDP-11 /70:

Computer appeared at the moment of transition to semiconductor technology. It was originally supplied with memory on ferrite cores, but later a version with a semiconductor memory of 2M words appeared, which was all placed inside the unit with a processor, and did not require placement in a rack. 16-bit words, 2.5 MIPS. Pay attention also to the terminal VT100, located on the left.

IBM System / 360 model 91 console :

The computers themselves have not survived due to the generous use of gold in the design. Museum workers are working on the creation of a hardware emulator, which at the time of my visit was turned off.

32-bit words, from 2 to 6 megabytes of memory (memory counting in bytes, not in words, went from IBM), 16.7 MIPS, introduced in 1967. It was programmed using punched cards, there was a functioning automatic machine for their printing, but I managed not to take a picture of it.

DEC PDP-12:

Mutant, combining the functionality of PDP-8 and LINC , the mode of operation was switched with a special pen on the keyboard. Allowed to connect a large number of laboratory equipment. He had a vector display to display information.

12-bit words, from 4K to 32K words of memory, 300 KIPS, introduced in 1969.

Interdean 7/32 :

A computer that has proven the usefulness of writing operating systems is not in assembler, and indeed the separation of programs from the hardware on which they are executed. This is the first non-PDP computer that Unix has been ported to. Presented in 1974, 32-bit words, memory from 8K to 256K words, 280 KIPS.

A poster with a story:

Moving to the hall with mainframes. There is a little bit noisy:

Xerox Sigma 9 :

Xerox did good computers, but failed marketing, and as a result it was squeezed out from the mainframe market.

32-bit words, 64K to 512K memory words, 600 KIPS.

Disk array Everything is off, because it turned out that when dust got into the working device, the balancing of the disks could be broken and the disks naturally exploded.

Blue cylinders - containers for storing hard drives, one drive weighs 5 kilograms.

DEC PDP-10: KI-10 :

Information about the car and start-up instructions:

This computer is in the process of recovery. It was kept in a flooded basement, which did not have a positive effect on its performance.

Semi-assembled IBM System / 360.

Eight-inch diskettes, I haven't seen them for a long time.

DEC PDP-10: KS-10:

36-bit words, memory size from 256K to 512K words, 300 kips. Such a computer was bought by Microsoft after moving from Albuquerque.

XKL TOAD-1:

The developer of this computer wanted to make a clone of KL-10, which could fit on the table. It took 15 years to develop, and by the time of entering the market (1995), due to the dominance of IBM PC-compatible computers, no one needed it. Yes, and the table was placed with difficulty.

36-bit words, from 32M to 128M words of memory, 2.5 MIPS.

DEC VAX -11 / 780-5:

Presented in 1982. 32-bit words, from 1 to 64 megabytes of memory, 750 kips.

Data General Eclipse / MV 8000 :

Introduced in 1980, 32-bit words, from 256 kilobytes to 2 megabytes of memory, 250 kips.

We return to smaller computers. The great-grandfather of all modern Xerox Alto personal computers:

The first computer with a graphical interface, WYSIWIG editor, Ethernet and mouse. It was from him that Microsoft and Apple borrowed many features from their computers and operating systems.

16-bit words, from 64 to 256 kilobytes of memory.

AT & T BLIT :

The terminal with its own memory and processor, which received the executable code over the network and executed locally, which in a certain way untied from the network bandwidth. The prototype of the X Window System is visible on the monitor.

No mouse anymore:

Starting the programming manual:

The middle. How to work with the mouse:

Legendary MITS Altair 8800 :

The computer that actually became the parent of Microsoft. It was for him that Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote in the shortest possible time and without access to the computer itself (they had an Intel 8080 emulator on the PDP-10, which they adapted according to the instructions for Altair), that same BASIC interpreter, which Microsoft began.

For $ 400 you received a bag of parts. If you have a soldering iron and direct hands, you could have a working computer that was programmed with toggle switches on the front panel. Entering a program that adds 2 and 2 takes you a few minutes, and then you can see the answer in binary form on the LED bar: “100”, known to wide circles of the population as “4”. Despite all the difficulties, people bought the Altairs simply because, finally, they could have their own computer.