On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, Paul Koning wrote:
Vintage> The overall discussion is very useful,
but in my particular
Vintage> case, it needs to pertain specifically to the IBM 650,
Vintage> because the assertion at hand is that a document used to
Vintage> discredit a certain scientist's claim to a certain
Vintage> achievement has a date stamp on it that is claimed was
Vintage> produce by the IBM 650 using its internal clock feature.
Vintage> The 650 does not have such a feature inherently, so now I'm
Vintage> trying to determine if there was ever an adjunct product
Vintage> that IBM produced to give the 650 the ability to tell time.
It sure doesn't look like that from the docs on Al Kossow's website.
It seems that the 650 doesn't have interrupts, which would make a
simple periodic tick type system pretty problematic.
Yep.
If the exercise is to attach the credibility of the
document, it looks
to me like you have enough data to do that. You can clearly say
"there isn't any such thing as an 'internal clock feature' on the
650". That puts the ball in the other party's court, to try to
demonstrate that there did exist some obscure add-on of which not a
word appears in the dozen or so IBM docs that are on-line.
Exactly. But I'm trying to be as thorough as possible in this research
since I may well end up acting as an expert witness in the upcoming trial.
And even then, another question becomes whether the
time stamp is real
or a forgery, independent of what machine generated it.
Two separate forensic tests performed on the alleged document indicates
several problems with it. My client is pursuing all angles because he
wants a slam dunk. So I'm going to help him deliver it ;)
Thanks!
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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