Meet a Zuse Z23

Hi. This week I had the pleasure to visit a Zuse Z23 on display in my city. The Z23 is a first generation, discrete transistor and diode logic, drum based machine with a small "cache" of core memory. It is hosted at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering. Here is the Press release regarding the Zuse machine: http://www.iese.fraunhofer.de/de/presse/current_releases/PM-2010-16-210610z… Ohh, if you can't read german (at all we are talking about a german computer ;-) ) here is the english version: http://www.iese.fraunhofer.de/press/current_releases/PM-2010-16-210610z23.j… I took some pictures: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/bilder/Zuse_Z23/ The machine is in very good, but not working condition. I suspect it would be a huge task to make it operable again, like the PDP-1 restoration. But it could be done. There is a complete set of documentation, schematics, some spare parts, ... A former user of that machine from the local university explained the machine and its inner workings in detail to us. In one word: Fascinating! :-) BTW: There is a tube based Zuse Z22 in working condition on display in the ZKM museum in Karlsruhe (Germany). The Z23 is kind of a transistor reimplementation of the Z22: http://www.zkm.de/algorithmische-revolution/index.php?module=pagemaster&… Pictures only in the german version: http://www.zkm.de/algorithmische-revolution/index.php?module=pagemaster&… -- \end{Jochen} \ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}