19 Feb
2010
19 Feb
'10
6:46 p.m.
Gene Buckle wrote:
To say it is running again is a little bit misleading. A huge amount of work was done by
my fellow members of the Computer Conservation Society, including some of the people who
designed Colossus in the first place and it is great to have it but Winston Churchill had
the Colossi(?) broken up into small bits and so this is a replica, an extraordinarily
correct replica but a replica all the same, therefore it is now running, not running
again.
Apparently they had less problems getting the difficult bits working as the plans had been
released from UK government archives, than the off the shelf 'commercial' items,
plans of which had long since been lost except for the odd hoarder like me and probably
you. Also thing like switches were available off the shelf, with a high priority job they
had first call on things and selected Spitfire fighter switches which were then being
produced in good quantities and good quality.
Roger Holmes
On Thu, 18 Feb 2010, William Donzelli wrote:
I'm pretty sure Colossus is running again at Bletchley Park. I only
wish I could get over there to see it in person. There are some youtube
videos available.
Later,
Charlie C.
The chances of more tube computers coming out of the woodwork is very,
very slim, but it has happened in the past few years. It is actually
reasonable to think that someone could have an IBM 650 or Bendix G-15
tucked away in a basement or garage.
Here's one that last I heard was in service with the RAF:
http://199.254.199.10/BehindTheScenes/lockheed.html
The company that owned it was bankrupted by the training market downturn
after 9/11. It was sold in 2003.