*** Ideas needed for developing interactive displays.... - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

7 Sep 2004

...
 From: ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell)
Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic 
Posts&quot;&lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt;
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: *** Ideas needed for developing interactive displays....
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 23:29:32 +0100 (BST) <SNIP>
...
   While I have
not been following every message in this thread..It seems  like
  a replica might be the best way to go. Could
definitely "play some  games" to

NO!!!!

Sorry, but I object to technical museums that present replicas (and
emulators hidden inside the case of an older machine, and...) as the real
thing. You would not accept an art gallery that showed copies of the
famous paintings, you shouldn't accept it for computers either.

If I go to a museum it's because I want to see the real machine -- one I
don't happen to already have. I don't want to see a fake.

-tony 
I mostly agree. Technical museums shouldn't play games with "fake" hardware.

Demonstrating said hardware is another matter. It would be really cool to 
sit at the console of a Univac and run some calculations on it, watch the 
power meters twitch as the accumulators spin. Maybe run the infamous 
election prediction algorithm :)

Running an actual Univac, however, would be cost prohibitive, in electricity 
alone if not in maintanance. Get a Univac all set up, maybe with just enough 
B+ to get some of the heater elements lit up for show, complete and in 
working order, mind you. But if people want to play with one have an 
accurate simulator set up, driven by a PDP11 or Palm Pilot or something 
equally humorous. It would clearly be marked as a simulator, but you'd get 
the full effect of operating a Univac. Maybe even have it blow a tube now 
and then :)

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