[cctalk] Re: Whitechapel Computer Works

On Fri, 4 Nov 2022 17:53:10 PM Tony Duell <ard.p850ug1(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes hello, this is me. In fact, if you would like to see the Whitechapel MG-1 in my possession in operation, come up tomorrow (Sunday) to the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, where the system is on public display alongside an AT with a busy bunch of Transputers in it. It's all part of the Retro Computing Festival that's underway this weekend: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/69485/Retro-Computer-Festival-2022-S… If you can't make it to Cambridge, then when the machine is running (which it isn't at the moment --- wait for between 10 AM and 5 PM GMT Sunday), you can visit the machine over HTTP at http://mg-1.uk . (Note no https.) Working MG-1s and related machines (like the colour CG-1) are rare owing to leaky batteries (what else). I'm very grateful to Tony for his generous sharing of MG-1 materials --- it helps make it possible to show off the MG-1 in this way! I've got everything on Google Drive, with links available on the website just mentioned. Since it's liable to be down when you're reading this, here's an archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124716/http://mg-1.uk/ Note also this page with links to 42nix 2.6 OS media, also owing to Tony: https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124758/http://mg-1.uk/42nix/42nix.html You will probably have to edit archive.org's links out to Google Drive in order for them to work, but I think it should be pretty easy to do this. I have been meaning to make disk images of my best-effort reconstruction of a clean 42nix 2.5 installation (a predecessor to the version linked above), which I derived from a disk image taken from one of Jim Austin's MG-1s. There is not a vast difference for the user at the console between 2.5 and 2.6, although they did fix a bug in the TCP/IP implementation that allows a forking HTTP server running on 2.5 to cause a kernel panic. I suspect revisions to TCP/IP were required to get NFS working, which, I remember concluding, had been a new feature for 2.6. I've never been able to get my hands on GENIX. All sorts of spare boards, including things like never-populated bare It took me a lot longer than I like to admit to realise that HITECH was derived from wHITECHapel... Speaking of discoveries, I found out today that the Centre for Computing History is in possession of a couple Hitech MIPS machines (sans cases). Apparently they might have some media on QIC tapes as well. Tony, I'll try to get you in touch with the person I was speaking with about this. Meanwhile TNMOC at Bletchley are in possession of three MG-1s. --Tom