30 Oct
2006
30 Oct
'06
12:18 p.m.
Ok so you do know different. Why is there so little
discussion of
these on the list?
There are VERY VERY few people that have such systems. I only know of at
most a dozen in the US, and most of them do not participate in on-line
discussions. A few rairly use email.
Is there a more appropriate list? Maybe as we all have
different
manufacturer's kit we have little to talk about, but we still face
Similar problems, thing like tracking down media, repairing peripherals, fault
finding logic, keeping the machine clean and stopping them rusting,
keeping the offline support stuff working - keypunches, Flexowriters,
Teletypes etc, though maybe that is not a problem for you as your
machine has a comms controller.
The Computer History Museum is formalizing the restoration process, now that
several machines have either been restored, or are in the process.
Surviving systems from before 1975 are very rare animals, esp mainframes,
since so many of them have been scrapped for precious metals. Sadly, there
is even less software that has survived. CHM didn't start seriously
collecting documentation nor software prior to the move to the West Coast in
the 90's. While they have an impressive collection of hardware, and a pretty
decent collection of US computer documentation now, the software holdings
pre 1975 are minimal.
I will be giving a talk at VCF this Saturday on the CHM software collection.