19 Dec
2005
19 Dec
'05
11:51 a.m.
woodelf wrote:
Jules Richardson wrote:
Yep. We've actually got one (possibly two) spare core stacks for the machine
too if there's something *really* toasted about the one in the machine (I
can't remember the nature of the fault myself now). The guy who looks after it
was a trained Elliott engineer, so I don't expect it'd be a complicated repair
either - it's just time consuming and there are always a million other things
to be done!
Would be nice to have it running again though. I only realised at the weekend
that there's a massive lighting strip built into the back of the control desk
- quite why you'd want to run it in an otherwise dark room I don't know!
cheers
J.
Ahh, that's earlier than our Marconi TAC then (1963 IIRC, although
designed in the late 50's).
Not sure what we have that's earlier and qualifies. The Elliott 803 is
late 1950's (1958 I think) but has a core fault so doesn't count as
working until someone finds the time to fix it! It's probably the
earliest complete machine that we have though; prior to that we just
have small bits of some of the earlier famous* machines.
That may be easyer to fix than modern core memory , since I belive
modern core uses IC drivers and IC sense amps no longer made.