Distrowatch

[Lindsay]

Thats good to hear.   Museums required everywhere to save the history of
computers......

On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 07:50 +0100, Tony Arnold wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 17:04 +1200, Lindsay wrote:
> > What I'd like to know is, are any of these old computers kept alive in
> > museums or are there just no valves etc.. alive to work them anymore?  I
> > lost my memory back in 1968 and dont recall the monsters of before that
> > time.
> 
> You may be aware that the first stored program computer was built at the
> University of Manchester (UK) back in 1949. It was known as Mark 1, used
> valves and cathode ray tubes to store the programs.
> 
> A replica of this was built in 1999 to celebrate 50 years of computing
> at Manchester. The replica  actually works and is now in the the Museum
> of Science and Industry here in Manchester. Take a look at
> www.computer50.org for more information.
> 
> Regards,
> Tony.
> 
> > On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 15:48 +0100, Tony Arnold wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 23:54 +1000, Peter Garrett wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 06:41 +0100, david wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 13:04 +1000, Peter Garrett wrote:
> > > > > > On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 22:19 -0400, mario8723 wrote:
> > > > > > > Emphasis on 99%. How did I know somebody was going to respond like that?
> > > > > > > =D>
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > -- 
> > > > > > > mario8723
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > <cue: Monty_Python_4_Yorkshiremen>
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Aye, well....
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > When *I* were lad, used to punch out Fortran IV, on mechanical punch
> > > > > > keyboard.... carry deck 'o cards to front counter of Computer Centre,
> > > > > > *queue* for privilege of using IBM mainframe, and come back *a day
> > > > > > later* to find printout of bugs!
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > XP? OS/2? Win3.1 ? HA! *YOU* were *lucky* !!
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > </ Monty_Python>
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > luxury!
> > > > > 
> > > > > We had a bag of ones and zeros which we had to lay out on t'ground and
> > > > > if we got it wrong father would whip us wi' cat5 cables.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Ones and zeros? You were lucky! Our Mum and Dad would throw letters from
> > > > alphabet soup on t'floor and make us write COBOL with 'em before we
> > > > could eat 'em!
> > > > 
> > > > Had to lick ground clean wit' tongue to debug program !...
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Right ...
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Back in 1975, every morning and evening, I used to have to key in 30
> > > words of octal number using a row of 16 switches on a PDP-11/20 just to
> > > load a bootstrap program. The system used to boot up from a 256 kilobyte
> > > fixed disk, run 16 terminals (Olivetti teletype) and used 2 exchangeable
> > > hard disks each holding 2.4 megabytes. The system had 16 kilobytes of
> > > memory in total.
> > > 
> > > (This is absolutely true, but you trying telling it to the kids of
> > > today, and they won't believe you!).
> > > 
> > > Regards,
> > > Tony.
> > > -- 
> > > Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
> > > Manchester Computing, Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL.
> > > T: +44 (0)161 275 6093, F: +44 (0)870 136 1004, M: +44 (0)773 330 0039
> > > E: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk, H: http://www.man.ac.uk/Tony.Arnold
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> -- 
> Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
> Manchester Computing, Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL.
> T: +44 (0)161 275 6093, F: +44 (0)870 136 1004, M: +44 (0)773 330 0039
> E: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk, H: http://www.man.ac.uk/Tony.Arnold
> 
>