> From: Jason T
> I have two 11/05s and one key .. The key is made by Chicago Lock Co.
> and is stamped "GRB2."
Perfect description of my 11/10 key. I'm now 99% sure they are all the same,
but I think I'll have one made, and sent to the person nearest me, for an
absolute confirmation, before I produce a cascade of them. (Plus to which the
store probably needs to order more blanks - I'm not sure they have that many
in stock! :-)
> I'd like two please.
Added you to my list.
Noel
> From: Chuck Guzis
> So what's special about "electronic" computers?
> Isn't this just a mere technological refinement? Logic gates can be
> electrical, electronic, pneumatic, hydraulic and photonic
There's a saying that a big enough quantitative difference becomes a
qualitative difference. So electronic computing devices, because of their
speed potential, are of a qualitatively different order than anything that
involves moving matter around... :-)
> In the game of firsts, where does Torres y Quevedo's "El Ajedrecista"
> fit in?
Alas, can't answer that - I've heard the name, but don't know much about his
machine.
> From: Jon Elson
> Atanasoff and Beqrry did a GREAT job, but it wasn't actually
> a "computer" by the Turing definition.
Which is why I described it as the first digital electronic computing
device... :-)
Interestingly, one could add 'binary' to that description. The ENIAC of
course wasn't, and I don't think COLOSSUS was either, in its counters, etc
(but would have to check - does anyone know/recall).
> all that was left were some drawings in a few binders. They published
> NOTHING about the machine itself, and it was largely unknown for
> DECADES!
> ...
> .. as far as I'm concerned, Atanasoff and Berry are a VERY interesting
> footnote in early computing, but didn't actually contribute directly to
> the development of computers.
Well, there was a lengthy report written, but it was never circulated publicly
because Atanasoff was trying to file a patent, and the patent attorney (IIRC)
advised them not to publish until the patent application was filed - which it
never was, with WWII starting. There was a contemporary press release about
the device, which resulted in local coverage only.
The whole thing did come within a hair's-breadth of winding up where Zuse's
work did - a curiousity which did not have much impact on the world - but for
one stroke of chance/luck: word of the machine somehow reached a man called
John W. Mauchly, who came out to visit Atanasoff and Berry in June 1941, and
spent almost a week there, talking with them, and studying the machine, and
their written material.
He later tried to claim that it was no big deal, and the ABC didn't really
affect his thinking much - but that won't wash, you don't spend nearly a week
intently studying something you think is irrelevant junk. (And Mauchly's
letters to Atanasoff, written shortly after the visit, make clear that he
was much taken with the ABC.)
It's clear there is a very significant link between the ABC and the ENIAC -
and the influence of the latter is clear.
Noel
Update on my attempts to bootstrap the SIMH Royal Precision Electronic
Computer model LGP-30.
I have been able to get through a lot more of the simulator-equivalent
processing steps to match the input of the bootstrap programs via the
native Flexowriter. I have been able to discover the syntax and basic I/O
via trial and error, and a lot of reading. I believe that loading the
bootstrap manually is a must; one cannot use or create tapes otherwise.
Most SIMH's have some kind of software guide, the LGP-30 has none. I don't
think this SIMH has the bootstrap pre-loaded. I am unaware of anyone who
is using the SIMH simulator, although I have seen two non-SIMH LGP-30
simulators. One is in German.
In order to enter instructions into memory I first learned how to translate
code from the various actual papertape sources, for example...
"flexowriter entry"> 6300 P 0000'
becomes
sim> d -a 6300 10000000
where 6300 = memory loc in drum memory, 1000 = P, 0000 = accumulator
address (?). You can't store a "P" or "p" in memory. You have to convert
to its Flexo binary equiv. Same goes for all instructions in the LGP-30
repertoire. The hardest part is finding ways to enter Flexowriter key
input via a modern keyboard, using SIMH commands.
It's all pretty slow going to patch together what I think would be a
workable bootstrap install process, but I expect to have to try a number of
variations before I get any response from the machine. I have a bootstrap
but the hard part if the Flexowriter emulation. Who knows, maybe I will be
able to contribute a software guide from all of this. I will document what
I find and post on my web site, vintagecomputer.net.
Bill
Happy New Year, all!
Has anyone here gone through the process of reparing leaky NiCd damage
to an A4000 motherboard? I _thought_ I had removed the battery some
time ago but puttering around today, I cracked open the case to find
the battery still there and some damage around U891 (a 74F245) and
U850 (Bank 3 DIMM socket). I have washed off the residue but I may
have to pull a DIMM socket to get access to the vias under it.
I know the general process, but I'm curious if anyone has done this
specifically to an A4000 board and has any tips. As I said, I'm
probably going to have to pull the DIMM socket to get to all the
damage.
Barring success from running a dozen or so repair wires, would anyone
happen to have a lead on an A4000 motherboard? Everything else in the
machine should be good, the Daughter Card, the CPU card, etc...
It's my only A4000, so I'd like to get it back up and running, or
replace it if necessary.
Thanks for any tips,
-ethan
> From: Noel Chiappa
> I'm about to go back for two more: does anyone else need one/any? If
> so, please let me know
One thing I need to check, before I get a whole stack made: does anyone know
for sure if all 11/05's and 11/10's use the same key? (This is a standard,
flat 'Yale'-type key, not the cylindrical key used in the 11/45's, etc.) The
two I have do, but they came from the same place, and so might have been
re-keyed to use the same key.
Thanks!
Noel
> From: Jon Elson
> How about John von Neumann? Geez, I think he really ranks above Turing,
> at least as far as building real machines.
This is unclear, for a whole host of reasons.
First, you should look at Turing's ACE. Designed by Turing, at about the same
time as the EDVAC, it spawned the Pilot ACE which was an important early
British computer (commercialized as the Deuce). This machine is too large a
topic to go into here, but may I suggest Copeland's admirable work on the
subject, "Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine" - among other interesting
aspects, he claims (and makes a good argument) that the ACE is RISC machine
(the first).
Turing was heavily involved in early computer work from the end of WWII until
his death (e.g. at the start of that period, he attended the Symposium on
Large Scale Digital Calculating Machinery at Hardvard in February, 1947).
Second, when assessing the relative important of the contributions of Turing
and von Neumann, there are a number of things to take into account.
First, one needs to be aware that he and Turing were close colleagues; before
WWII, Turing spent a year at Princeton working with von Neumann (who wanted
to hire Turing as his assistant, at the end of Turing's year there). During
WWII, Turing spent a long visit in the US (from November 1942 to March 1943),
during which he spent a lot of time at Bell Labs, where when not doing
war-work, he discussed computing machine with people there, including
Shannon. So Turing's ideas on stored program computing devices were well
known to von Neumann - who in fact seems to have always credited Turing with
the idea (see Copeland, "Turing", pp. 130-131).
Second, the 'EDVAC Report', despite the fact that it had only von Neumann's
name on it, in fact reported on a series of design discussions between he,
Eckert and Mauchly - and the latter two were rather annoyed that their
contributions were not adequately recognized in it. (Again, see Copeland,
"Turing", pp. 130-131 - although this point is treated at greater length in
other sources I don't have the time to track down.)
So von Neumann's _original_ contributions to computers may not be as big as
some think.
Noel
> From: Jon Elson
> such as to not evacuate Coventry when they knew it was next for getting
> blitzed.
Ah, this is alas an urban legend ('bogo-meme', to coin a nice neologism);
started, IIRC, by Winterbotham.
This has been demolished, by, among others, R. V. Jones, who was in a
position to know (as the recipient of Ultra material at the Air Ministry), in
his biographical work, "The Wizard War", pp. 147-151. He refers to evidence
given by John Martin (Churchill's secretary, who was with him in the car that
night), and John Colville (Assistant Private Secretary, who was on duty at 10
Downing St. that night). They are both quite clear that the target was
unknown before the raid started; Jones gives the details on why not.
> there are some descriptions that the actual wiring of the rotors was
> done AT Bletchley
I'd love to read about that - do you know/recall where you saw it?
> If a German spy was to get his hands on the drawings for even one
> (wired) rotor, they would have realized how thoroughly the British had
> penetrated the Enigma system
I am less certain of this. I seem to recall (alas, too busy to look it up,
unless someone's really interested) that the Germans had something of a
modern concept of code security, where it's assumed that the actual ciphering
machine is compromised, and security depends on the security of the keys.
Given the wide deployment of Enigma at the tactical level, the odds were good
that the machine itself had been compromised. So for them to have found out
that the British had the rotor wiring would not have been a big surprise, I
would expect.
However, had they gotten any kind of detailed description of the Bombe, it
would have not been that hard to work out that its use was to break into
Enigma. In that sense, the Bombe's overall design was in fact a bigger secret
than the fact that they had the rotor wiring.
And of course as a result of the XX system, the British were fairly sure that
there were no German spies in the UK at the time, anyway.
Noel
https://plus.google.com/photos/106111250846948401252/albums/6114301294379699
009?banner=pwa
I picked it up, new, at the recycler, thinking it was a drill bit, but it is
not. It is 13 cm long, and has a light or lens of some sort at the small
end. The large end is about 3/4". It appears to be made of stainless steel.
Engraved on it is QD90-6722. I added another pic, showing the larger end.
There is a lens of some sort inside, and light shines through to the lens at
the smaller end.
Cindy Croxton
> From: Lawrence Wilkinson
> If you're going to condense 5 years of military, academic and
> engineering development into a movie then things are going to suffer.
> I think they did a reasonably good job.
If the former's what they'd done, I'd agree.
(And I can think of historical movies that have done that, and still produced
a movie that was both very watchable, and reasonably accurate; e.g. in "The
Gathering Storm", they've made Ralph Wigram stand in for a bunch of people,
including him, who fed data to Churchill. I can live with that; too many
characters would just confuse the average viewer.)
But the Imitation Game writer(s) did a lot more than that. E.g. the whole
bogus 'Turing versus his Blimpian manager who wanted to shut his project
down' meme. That's completely bogus, 173 degrees out of phase with the truth,
and clearly added purely to give, well, I'm not sure what.
The thing is that what he and the others at BP (although he was primus inter
pares, there were others such as Welchman, Tutte, etc who made massive,
remarkable additions - and, as you point out, in the end it was an
industrial-scale enterprise) did was so amazing, and they had to struggle
against such difficulties, they didn't _need_ to 'sex up' the plot with that
kind of stupid cliche.
As far as I'm concerned, all those lame hackneyed plot elements just prove
that the script-writer(s) were distinctly third-rate - because if they were
actually any good, there's more than enough powerful material in Turing's
actual story to make a much, much better movie, without relying on that kind
of pathetic bilge.
Noel
