31 Aug
2012
31 Aug
'12
12:08 a.m.
Josh,
The museum is The National Museum of Computing, at Bletchley Park, UK -- www.tnmoc.org.
Our displays include not just the PERQ 1 (and the T2 next to it), but a range other ICL
computers including a 2966 mainframe. If you get a chance to visit, let me know. I'd
love to show you around.
Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com> wrote:
On 8/30/2012 4:41 PM, Colin Eby wrote:
-- Colin
Josh,
I'll be trying to prepare the machine as a dynamic museum display.
As
part of that process, I'll be going through
the existing archive to
identify what's there in detail. I have a summary list. I'll pass
on a
listing of what diskettes are there as soon as I
have a chance to go
through them. Before using them on the live system (assuming
everything
comes back to life without too much jiggery
pokery) I'll be
attempting
to Catweasel the diskettes as a backup.
Typically I store files in a
raw MFM serialisation format so they can always be re-postprocessed
into
a specific image type later. We have a stable
rig set up for the
purpose. Depending on the licensing limitations of the software I
discover, and the determination of the museums archivist, I may be
able
to share those images officially. Personally
I'm all for Al's share
everything approach. But the museum has legal niceties to address,
and
that's the purview of our archivist. Be
assured, we are doing
tactical
scanning and imaging, and planning for a
pervasive approach -- it's
just
down to money as always (all cash donations
welcome --
www.tnmoc.org!)
As for backing off the hard disk over serial --
I'd love to have a go
with that. If the system is run regularly, it will be important to
have
a backup.
Very cool. Let me know if you need my utilities, I can supply them as
Pascal source (which you can compile yourself if you end up with a
working POS system) or a bootable POS disk. I'll keep my fingers
crossed that you'll be able to release your archives.
Fair warning all of this is somewhat speculative for the moment. I'm
just gathering advice and documentation.
The PERQ is part of an exhibit area I'll attempting to breath life
back
into. Currently, in this room, we've revived
an HP K-class, IBM
5362,
IBM 6150RT, DECMate III and Cray Y-MP EL. On the
fix list are the
PDP
8, PDP 11/70, PERQ, Sun 6500, Xerox 860, HP 9845
and a number of
other
goodies. The PERQ's the next on the list.
However, this gallery is
just
one project strand out of half a dozen I'm
tied up on, so please be
patient with me. I'll share as much as I can as soon as I can. Just
at
the moment, my primary focus is on the IBM 7090
archive -- and
preparing
for that. I have hard dates to meet for that
project, so I other
tasks
end up taking longer. However, with a following
wind, I should get
cracking on the PERQ archive listing this weekend, and maybe work
through the power supply.
Sounds very cool, the PERQ deserves some museum-level attention :).
Where is this museum located?
Thanks!
Josh