26 Aug
2011
26 Aug
'11
9:35 a.m.
From: Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 5:44 PM
Christian Liendo wrote:
> Just interesting that that WSJ picked this up
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576516552161014410.h…
So Mr. Allen didn't want a 7090? That seems
rather picky, as they're
quite similar machines, other than that the 7090 didn't have the extra
index registers.
Our focus at the museum is on interactive computing, especially timesharing
mainframe systems and minicomputers. The 7090 is, and can be, neither. We
have a budget, and only spend money to further that mission.
"Soldered with silver and gold"? All of
them I've seen use normal
tin-lead solder. I thought silver solder was mostly used for jewelery,
plumbing, and high-temperature stuff, which wouldn't usually be found in
computers. I've never heard of gold solder used for anything other than
jewelery, and wouldn't think it would be useful for computers.
Hmmm... a web search does reveal that gold solder is
sometimes used for
soldering gold metalized alumina ceramic plages to gold plated Kovar
alloy assemblies. I haven't seen that kind of thing in really old
computers, though.
You should come visit the Xerox Sigma systems, to see what it looks like
in massive quantity.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/