As some here know, I collect some dusty deck fortran graphics. We have MOVIE.BYU up and running! (Thanks Douglas Taylor and Emanuel Steibler).
Ian built AMD 2901 bit slice hardware to run his graphics, it was called SuperSet, and was very quick for the 1980s. Architecture was 48 bit, A=B op C, similar to DSPs. Compiler processed fortran to this 48 bit 2900 hardware (he wrote the compiler too). Small package, a dormitory size refrigerator with all I/O to drive plotters and graphics terminals.
I went to look him up today, as he is not far from me in LA, San Diego, and a fellow R/C flier, and chat about the old Superset days, we did SIGGRAPH many times together.
Well, he is dead I find out, killed last year in Mexico is what the news says, buried in a well with his wife. They went often, many times a year.
Randy
This is a bit of a long shot, but is anyone aware of a successful method to read IBM Selectric MT/ST tapes? A museum in Australia has a box of them and are interested in the contents.
I'm fairly involved in the global Selectric community and while 1 or 2 MT/ST?s exist, they?re non-functional. I know IBM offered a 2495 Tape Reader for the IBM 360, which could be a starting point with modification, but I suspect those are even scarcer than the MT/ST itself.
Even the encoding format appears to be a bit of a secret. Recording is character-by-character, tape spacing controlled by sprocket holes along one edge.
https://obsoletemedia.org/ibm-mtst/ <https://obsoletemedia.org/ibm-mtst/?fbclid=IwAR28c5ej69AlF0os1PcykpHCh0Q_yz…>
Thanks- Cory
