On 09/08/2012 22:47, Tony Duell wrote:
So how can the current generation learn about their
computer heritage?
Replicas? Reproductions?
Simulators are good.
Rubbish!
Simulators are nowhere near enough to see what using a machine was really
like. In any case, most people (other than me) could run the simulators
at home, so there's no need for a museum to show them.
Simulators amy or may not include all the bugs and quirks of the real
machine. In gernaral the only way to find these is to run the real
machine and compare the behaviour of the simulator under certain test
cases. Simulators do not give the 'experienece' of the real machine (you
don't ahve to go and sort the deck of cards you dropped, you don't have
to put up with the clatter of an ASR33). And when it comes to
investigatign the hardware, no simuulator comes close.
I would certainly feel cheated if I visited a so-called operational
computer museum and found everything was simulated,
I think simulation has its
place. So for example at MOSI there are a
number of ASR33 TTYs and a small mini computer for which I think the
disk packs are missing. Now they are never going to get the mini running
but I would imagine the ASR33s are not beyond repair, they look
reasonably clean. So is it legitimate top connect these to some kind of
simulation (Raspberry PI based perhaps) to give folks the experience of
using a TTY with auithentic old software?
grandkids.
Just realize that it is a good idea to set aside *some*
machines in a museum, and treat them as if they need to last for 1000
years.
Except with the best will in thwe world it is not going to last 1000
years, or even 100 years. However you store it, parts will have degraded
before then. I really feel you are better of doing what you can with it
_now_ and recording all the information you can about it, while said
information can be obtained.
Case in point (not computer related). I have a device here which uses a
train of plastic gears to drive one of the rotating parts. When I was
running it, one of the gears litterally crumbed to dust. Not due to some
other part seizing up, just because it was old plastic. Fortunately I had
already counted and written down the numebr of teeth on all the gears
(this informatiaon is not in the service manual, which simply says it's
part <foo>) Of coruse I could then calcualte the diametircal pitch of the
gear it meshed with and thus get a suitagble repalcement. A bit of
machining to mke a hub to carry thsi gear and it was running again.
Now, you might say that if I'd never run it, that gear would be still be
good. Mayeb, But he repains were so weak and brittle that IMHO it would
have fallen apart sitting on the shelf. And if I hadn't been
investigating it, and hadn't counted the teeth, it would have been
next-to-impossible to repair.
-tony
--
Dave Wade G4UGM
Illegitimi Non Carborundum
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