"Re: Fwd: RE: IBM 7090 documents and tapes- follow on"

Susan, Peter, I have an IBM 7094 in my collection, the model after the 7090. See http://www.piercefuller.com/collect/main.html My 7094-I is complete with peripherals (tape drives, card reader and printer) cables and spares, along with full hardware documentation and extensive software including diagnostics and IBSYS. It is in storage and until recently has been on view, but now the entire collection is packed to tight for viewing. It is not unreasonable to expect that it could be made to run again; Jay Jaeger, Richard Smith and I brought up a 7094-II in similar shape many years ago. Susan, does your 7090 have its cables? I am not aware of any other 7090/7094 systems in existence except for IBM's own collection. IBM only kept the cabinets, and in some cases only the consoles, not the cables or documentation. There is/was a small trove of 7094 bits and pieces in Ohio, including several consoles and much valuable software, but no cabinets. Jay Jaeger and I have raided the tapes and documents a couple of times, that is where the SHARE tapes on my web site came from. SHARE was the IBM user's group for the 709x series. I have a working setup to read the 7-track tapes that were used with the 1401 and 7000 series computers. I've read most of the tapes in my collection and several other interesting tapes people have sent to me. I wrote special decoding software to extract the data despite dropouts caused by specks of dirt on the tape, and I've found that nearly all tapes no matter how old or how well or poorly stored can be read easily. Once I've read a tape I put the bits up on my web site, and several people have used them to get the old software running again on simulators they have written for these old computers. Peter - We are still missing several interesting pieces of software and software documentation. Its possible the stash you are responsible for contains some of these. Regardless of the eventual disposition, it would be very helpful if I could at least borrow anything I don't already have to read it and make the data available. Nearly all the tapes I have in my collection are already read in and can be found here and at the next link below: http://www.piercefuller.com/library/magtape7.html A little of the software documentation I have has been scanned and can be found here (drill down to individual systems): http://www.piercefuller.com/library/ibm709x.html More can be found at bitsavers: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7090/ http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/share/ If you already have a detailed list of the tapes, cards and documents I would like to look it over to see if there is anything interesting. Alternatively, you might compare what you have available to the lists above and note anything different. We are particularly looking for some of the larger SHARE programs that were distributed seperately from the regular compilation tapes, such as the SOS operating system. I am also particularly interested in the APT application, and it would be great to find copies of famous old programs such as LISP. Paul Pierce