20 Jan
2004
20 Jan
'04
9:21 p.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
Great more computers with WHEELS.
Have we
forgotten John Zabolitzky's MUNIAC?
No, but I haven't heard anything about it since the initial flurry of
activity.
I would also like to fool around with making a tube based computer, but
frankly, I have enough projects to keep me busy. I have the tubes -
probably about 2000 computer rated dual triodes of various flavors, but I
am holding them until someone rolls a tubeless 709 up my driveway. One thing I would find very interesting is making a
tube computer (or
rather just the building blocks) using technology from 1930. No modern
stuff. Vintage tubes (24s, 27s, and the like), vintage sockets, vintage
caps and resistors, and so forth. It might be fun to see if even basic
logic functions could be made reasonably. Of course, a full computer
(imagine racks and racks of black wrinkle chassis with glowing tubes
behind) is silly for many reasons - size (even a serial machine would have
a big footprint), and parts availability (the tubes are not so bad, it is
everthing else, like *good* *reliable* vintage caps, as well as the iron).
And the radio people would probably hang you for buying up all these
parts.
Hey, I saw just the computer you were thinking about on a old STAR TREK
re-run: CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
Vintage TUBE stuff is the latest fad of PRO-AUDIO, so that stuff is all
dried up. You can't even get tubes from the 1940's for example: New Old
Stock 6SN7 $39 ... New sov-tech 6SN7 $9.
Ben.