Brent Hilpert wrote:
Rich Alderson wrote:
On the other hand, the last PDP-6 in existence
was destroyed by the Computer
Museum in Boston about 20 years ago, so you're one up there.
OK, I don't think I've heard this story.
Someone contributing to Wikipedia seems to want to tangentially counter it,
without explaining the background story.
That would be me, a CHM employee, that has access to all of the Boston museum
collection records. I have spoken to several of the staff members who were there
at the time. I have been trying to find ANY evidence this occurred, and have not
been able to.
CHM has the fast memory box from Stanford's PDP-6. It came from the Compaq donation
to CHM of what they had in >> DEC's << internal collection, and was NOT
donated to
the Boston Museum. As best as I've been able to determine, the 6 was sent to a DEC
warehouse after the anniversary at DECUS, and sat there until what was there was
sent to CHM. Since there is no record of this machine going to the Boston museum,
nor does anyone there that I have talked to remember it coming there, it would have
been difficult for them to have dismantled it. Every major donation to the Computer
Museum was cataloged. I cannot find anything for Stanford's PDP-6 in their records
or in the Museum Report, which at the time listed every donation they received.
I would like to find someone INSIDE of DEC that saw it in while
it was in the warehouse, but I haven't been able to locate anyone yet.
The rumor of the Museum destroying the system started because their gift shop was selling
modules, including the ALU modules from the PDP-6. I have been told these were from a
collection of DEC module spares that DEC donated. I haven't been able to determine
the earliest that they were being sold. If it was before the anniversary, they obviously
could not have been from Stanford's machine.
Because of this controversy, CHM has a policy that no artifacts will ever be offered for
sale to the public. Items that are deacessioned are offered only to other non-profit
institutions.