5 Apr
2019
5 Apr
'19
8:32 a.m.
From: Guy Dunphy
What I want to know is, how do front panels of
historic computers so
often get separated from the rest of the computer?
I suspect it probably happened a while back, before the start of the vintage
computer movement; you need to look at the decisions from the perspective of
back then. (As an example, back then, I was offered the complete PDP-11/45 of
my old group. I was up to my neck in contemporary, important, alligators - I
was on the IESG of the IETF at the time - and didn't have the time to deal
with saving it and moving it to my house; so I let it go - a loss I regret
terribly now.)
Here's what probably happened: the machines were about to be scrapped, and
saving the whole machine wasn't practical - often, in part, because those
machines were _huge_. (The CPU _alone_ of a KA10 would fill an entire room of
a normal house.) So, one has a limit to what one can do. So the choice is to
save the front panel alone... or to save nothing.
Noel