Components available - the rest of the story

On Sep 8, 2016, at 10:08 AM, Tom Gardner <t.gardner at computer.org> wrote: The rest of the story. As Al pointed out, much to our surprise, the museum has rejected an offer from Art's estate for the donation of a Fast Fourier Transform computing system which included both the Unicomp Computer and a hardware FFT accelerator. This is a very strange decision since the system is one of the earliest if not the first implementation of a FFT in anti-submarine and anti-aircraft warfare. FFT mathematics dates to 1965 but processor until much later had the power to do it real time in software at the resolution necessary, so Art invented the hardware accelerator and multiple units were sold to the Navy. The estate is appealing the museum's decision. The estate would like to keep the FFT system together and so if the museum continues with a cranial rectal inversion it will look to other alternatives including those of u who have already I will respond by email not later than tomorrow to the several list members who expressed interest in the components and/or the computer. I'm busy today helping set up the Atari retrospective for the IEEE Silicon Valley History Committee. Regards, Tom Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2016 18:16:23 -0700 From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Components available There is also a Unicomp 18 bit minicomputer, paper tape reader, and FFT processor circa 1972 in the garage (6ft rack) with full documentation. I walked out of the donations meeting with the other curators today who thought it was a piece of s**t and didn't want to take it, calling it a 'dumpster fire' Art was a friend of mine. Hopefully it can go someplace where it can be appreciated. Talk to Tom about it, unfortunately, time is short. -- 73 AF6WS Bickley Consulting West Inc. http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"