15 Dec
1998
15 Dec
'98
4:28 p.m.
I was looked through some older magazines and found another computer kit
from about 1959, 1960, a full page ad for the
"geniac". It has 6 dials, each
with 16 sets of radial holes. It's cost
was US$19.95 and made in Mass. My
guess is it was electro-mechanical, but could not tell any more from the ad.
The ad said it could play "Nim", but that doesn't seem to be that unusual.
Has anyone seen one or knows what it did?
Thanks,
-Dave
15 Dec
15 Dec
4:48 p.m.
On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, dave dameron wrote:
I was looked through some older magazines and found
another computer kit
from about 1959, 1960, a full page ad for the "geniac". It has 6 dials, each
with 16 sets of radial holes. It's cost was US$19.95 and made in Mass. My
(ssnip)
-Dave
Before me is a little book from my childhood.. one I had in 4th
grade, lost, and recently found another copy of. It is "The Space
Child's Mother Goose" and was printed in 1958. (I read it in 1960) It
is a unique collection of 'modernized' nursery rhymes, with
whimsical fine-point pen drawings. On page 36 is a drawing of a kid
standing on a stool, writing formulae on the blackboard and operating
a Geniac, while off to one side a Bearded Professor exhibits great
surprise. The rhyme for this page is:
Geniac, Geniac,
Digital miracle,
Giving and answer that's
Truly empirical.
Learned men, lost in a
Drawjopping daze,
Watch six-year-old Seniors, all
Grabbing off A's.
Note that the strangely spelt word in the text is as it appears;
part of the magic of this little book and perhaps partly an
explanation for The Way I Am today... draw your own conclusions.
;}
Cheers and Best of the Season
John
4:50 p.m.
On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, dave dameron wrote:
I was looked through some older magazines and found
another computer kit
from about 1959, 1960, a full page ad for the "geniac". It has 6 dials, each
with 16 sets of radial holes. It's cost was US$19.95 and made in Mass. My
guess is it was electro-mechanical, but could not tell any more from the ad.
The ad said it could play "Nim", but that doesn't seem to be that unusual.
Has anyone seen one or knows what it did?
Geez, Dave, you're stealing all of my thunder. Can't you wait until I
open up my museum of personal computing? :-)
The GENIAC was designed by Edmund Berkeley in 1955 and sold by his buddy
Oliver Garfield until the late 50's. Thomas Haddock calls the GENIAC the
first pc. He was close, but wrong.
A nice guy by the name of Tom Boyko has a GENIAC (please, dealers, don't
bug him about selling it):
Here are some pics of the manual:
http://www.Tom.Boyko.com/comp.htm
And here's an excellent Usenet account of how the GENIAC works:
http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=213505518
-- Doug
5:24 p.m.
dave dameron wrote:
I was looked through some older magazines and found another computer kit
from about 1959, 1960, a full page ad for the "geniac". It has 6 dials, each
with 16 sets of radial holes. It's cost was US$19.95 and made in Mass. My
guess is it was electro-mechanical, but could not tell any more from the ad.
The ad said it could play "Nim", but that doesn't seem to be that unusual.
Has anyone seen one or knows what it did?
Hell, with the DigiComp I could play Nim, with far less logic and
zero electricity. Wish I still had mine. Got to use those scans
and build one from scratch (and I'm not much of a machinist even
with plastic [I flunked balsa]). Nim is computationally gagloads
simpler than tic-tac-toe.
I'd love to see plans, scans, schematics for the Geniac as well,
though, apparently it's barely younger (by commercial delivery date)
than the Univac One.
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
WARNING: The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.
5:24 p.m.
[have I reached my posting limit yet?]
On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Ward Donald Griffiths III wrote:
I'd love to see plans, scans, schematics for the
Geniac as well,
though, apparently it's barely younger (by commercial delivery date)
than the Univac One.
Surprise: the same guy is responsible for both.
-- Doug
6:19 p.m.
Doug Yowza wrote:
[have I reached my posting limit yet?]
Dunno. Do you have one?
On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Ward Donald Griffiths III wrote:
Really doesn't surprise me that much, though I wasn't really
following the literature at the time, occupied as I was with
being born and then "mewling and puking in his mother's arms"
to quote Bill Shakespeare. I'd still like to see diagrams for
the Geniac, though.
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
WARNING: The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.
I'd love to see plans, scans, schematics for
the Geniac as well,
though, apparently it's barely younger (by commercial delivery date)
than the Univac One.
Surprise: the same guy is responsible for both. 
16 Dec
16 Dec
5:13 a.m.
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8:22 a.m.
On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
The first was made/cloned/sold by many companies,
including radio shack.
It consists of a number (8 or 10?) of multi-pole changeover slide
swtichs, which are the 'input'. The output is a row of torch (flashlight)
bulbs. You 'program' it by patching wires between the switch contacts,
thus making up logic gates (2 contacts in series = AND, 2 in parallel =
OR, etc). I seem to remember that the manual for the one I had (and
probably still have) included wiring for NIM, etc.
My main critism was that the various patch diagrams were never
explained. OK, so it was fun to make a binary adder or whatever, but to
me it would have been even more fun to understand why.
Agreed, I find that this is one of the least interesting early toy
"computers" for that reason. BTW, in the US it was marketed as the
Science Fair Digital Computer Kit.
The other is, I think, considerably rarer. It was made
by Philips, and
called the CL1600 series. It consists of a number of logic blocks that
can be wired (using patch leads) as a general 3-input logic gate. There
are 3 input sockets (A,B,C), one output socket (F) with a lamp next to
it, and 8 sockets to program the logic function, Another module, the same
size contained a battery-operated PSU and 6 input switches
That's one I haven't encountered. If you get a chance to photocopy the
manual for it, I'll see if I can dig up a service manual of some sort you
don't have yet :-)
-- Doug
9:54 a.m.
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1:19 p.m.
On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
It became rather more interesting if, like me, you
added a few relays and
a stepping switch.
That's a good idea. The original machine was basically a PROM, so add
some memory and a sequencer, et voila -- a real computer.
Is 'Science Fair' a name used by Radio
Shack/Tandy? It seemed to be that
in the UK - we had all sorts of 'Science Fair' kits, mostly of the '3
transistors joined by spring terminals' type.
Yes, that's the one -- king of the spring terminals.
There was also a Science Fair Microprocessor Trainer that I find much more
interesting, even if it's not mechanical: TMS1000, hex keypad, LEDs, and
speaker.
-- Doug
5:06 p.m.
Doug Yowza wrote:
Yes, "Science Fair" was a Tandy trademark. I never had the digital
kit, but in the late 60s/early 70s I had several of the better
general electronic kits, mostly analog stuff. The documentation
seemed OK in my hazy memory, but I did supplement it with a lot of
library check-outs.
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
WARNING: The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.
Is
'Science Fair' a name used by Radio Shack/Tandy? It seemed to be that
in the UK - we had all sorts of 'Science Fair' kits, mostly of the '3
transistors joined by spring terminals' type.
Yes, that's the one -- king of the spring terminals.
There was also a Science Fair Microprocessor Trainer that I find much more
interesting, even if it's not mechanical: TMS1000, hex keypad, LEDs, and
speaker.
17 Dec
17 Dec
4:20 a.m.
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16 Dec
16 Dec
8:46 a.m.
Here are a couple more 'toy' computers that I've come across, dating from
the early 1970's.
The first was made/cloned/sold by many companies, including radio shack.
It consists of a number (8 or 10?) of multi-pole changeover slide
swtichs, which are the 'input'. The output is a row of torch (flashlight)
bulbs. You 'program' it by patching wires between the switch contacts,
thus making up logic gates (2 contacts in series = AND, 2 in parallel =
OR, etc). I seem to remember that the manual for the one I had (and
probably still have) included wiring for NIM, etc.
I had two versions as a kid: in 1976, R-S sold one that had tissue-paper
light-bulb overlays and a field of holes for a patch board, then by 1978,
it was revised to use plastic overlays and spring clips fo the wires.
My main critism was that the various patch diagrams
were never
explained. OK, so it was fun to make a binary adder or whatever, but to
me it would have been even more fun to understand why.
That's why I never did much with mine. They just gave you full-blown
patch assignments with *zero* explanation of the logic behind it.
-ethan
17 Dec
17 Dec
6:07 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Here are a couple more 'toy' computers that
I've come across, dating from
the early 1970's.
Tony,
Do you know of the Wireless World Computer, the design was published in
that magazine in 1967. The students 3 years older than me built one at
school and I got to be its guardan when they left. It was my first
introduction to hands on hardware.
It was an 8 bit word serial "machine" with 3 words of memeory,
"programs" had to be entered on switches.
I have the bound volume of WW with the complete designs, mabe I should
contact WW and see if they would allow me to publish it on the web?
Regards,
_---_--__-_-_----__-_----_-__-__-_-___--_-__--___-__----__--_--__-___-
Hans B Pufal Comprehensive Computer Catalogue
<mailto:hansp@digiweb.com> <http://digiweb.com/~hansp/ccc>
11:38 p.m.
New subject: Toy computers
> Here are a couple more 'toy' computers
that I've come across, dating from
> the early 1970's.
Speaking of toy computers, I have seen an actual one
yesterday at Kaufhof (a big department store chain in
Germany). The series is calld IQ-Computer and has 3
Models - A Laptop, called IQ-Unlimited, with 512K RAM
and 4MB ROM, and two desktop Models with 128 or 512 K
RAM, called IQ TV 128 and IQ TV 512 - a lot of build
in programms (wordprocessor, spread sheet, drawing,
etc.) and a graphics resolution of 320x200 in at least
16 colours. The keyboard looks PC alike, and althrough
the Software looks MS-Win like, it isn't - also not GEOS.
The price is between 400 and 700 Mark.
Now, what I like to know is, has anyone already opened
this device ? Is it based on any 'historic' design ?
Maybe an Apple ][ or MSX ?
Gruss
H.
P.S.: The brand Name is V-TECH.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
18 Dec
18 Dec
4:47 a.m.
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2:29 p.m.
On Fri, 18 Dec 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
Sounds interesting... I don't think I have the
appropriate year of WW,
though. I do have all the articles for the PE 'digical', which was a
build-it-yourself-from-TTL 4-function calcualtor. It used successive
addition for multiplication (and was thus slow as heck) and a diode
matrix ROM for the control store. Needless to say it is rather interesting.
How I wish we got projects like this in magazines today...
Me too! What are kids these days coming up on?
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always being hassled by the man.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 12/07/98]
19 Dec
19 Dec
12:08 a.m.
Doug Yowza wrote:
On Fri, 18 Dec 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:
Not an example of the product to be found anywhere around here, I've
checked all around the NYC metro area. And based on my talks with
Toys'B'We employees, most of them aren't going under trees for the
kids. (Well, I don't even have any kids).
Must've been that commercial of the Lego robot catching sister in the
shower.
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
WARNING: The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.
Me too! What are kids these days coming up on?
LEGO MindStorms, the lucky bastards.
1:09 a.m.
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4:53 a.m.
Hmmm... From what I've seen of the Mindstorms set
available in the UK,
it's not that great. What really annoys me is that it'll do a lot more
than they tell you about in the instructions (based on the stuff I've
read on the web). And I _HATE_ products like that.
I've never used them (or seen the Web page). However, there is hope.
In the thread about Xerox and Smalltalk, I think someone (Hans P.?)
mentioned Squeak. (I'm not going to check my archives now, since my
compiler is due in a couple of hours and the final exam comes right
after that!) Squeak is a free version of Smalltalk, very faithful to
the original Xerox plan, with full source. (It was written at Apple in
an apparemtn momemt of generosity -- I wish the Mac weren't such a closed
platform to get a compiler for.)
What does this have to do with Lego Mindstorms? Well, someone is working on
a Smalltalk interface to Lego Mindstorms! (Unless my brain is fried, that
is.) I forget if it requires a commercial Smalltalk, but I suspect people
are interested in porting it to Squeak. I couldn't find the details -- the
articles seem to have expired. And I'm not going through my files (see
above -- anyway they're at home and I'm not). But this is a very good sign
for education.
Besides, I really like Squeak. I hated VisualWorks (an expanded, refined
descendant of the original Xerox Smalltalk) when I used it in class. But
Squeak is a lot more manageable, and it helps to be able to tinker instead
of worrying about doing homework.
I really wish someone would write an Alto or other Xerox workstation
simulator, but until then, Squeak may be the best approximation to using an
Alto. It really doesn't come close though. (It has color and much more
processing power; it lacks the underlying Xerox Executive; and there's no
5-key set!)
There is the secondary issue with the Mindstorms kit
that I don't like
things that are tied to PCs, but that's another matter.
If the interface is ported to Squeak, you should be able to use your UNIX
machine or whatever else you can manage.
I'll not be getting one - I gave away my lego
years ago. Now,
Fischertechnik and Meccano (roughly the UK version of the Errector Set, I
think) are 2 'toys' that I've kept, and I don't mind admitting I still
use them...
Have you built a differential analyzer yet?
-- Derek
6:37 a.m.
New subject: Squeak Copyright (Was - Re: Another ~1960 computer kit)
On Sat, 19 Dec 1998, D. Peschel wrote:
after that!) Squeak is a free version of Smalltalk,
very faithful to
the original Xerox plan, with full source. (It was written at Apple in
an apparemtn momemt of generosity -- I wish the Mac weren't such a closed
platform to get a compiler for.)
Submitted for your approval, the following:
About Squeak in General
--------------------------------
Squeak 2.2
(c) 1996 Apple Computer, Inc.
(c) 1997, 1998 Walt Disney
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Does anybody know why Mickey's four-fingered paw prints are on it? The
license agreement is strictly Apple and what little is mentioned in the
history of Squeak, does not account for the Disney copyright.
What does this have to do with Lego Mindstorms? Well,
someone is working on
a Smalltalk interface to Lego Mindstorms! (Unless my brain is fried, that
is.) I forget if it requires a commercial Smalltalk, but I suspect people
are interested in porting it to Squeak. I couldn't find the details -- the
articles seem to have expired. And I'm not going through my files (see
above -- anyway they're at home and I'm not). But this is a very good sign
for education.
Squeak is currently being ported to a lot of things, particularly small
things. There is a WinCE version and a strong push to put it on the Pilot.
-- Steve
12:31 p.m.
New subject: Squeak Copyright (Was - Re: Another ~1960 computer kit)
On Sat, 19 Dec 1998, Stephen Dauphin wrote:
Does anybody know why Mickey's four-fingered paw
prints are on it? The
license agreement is strictly Apple and what little is mentioned in the
history of Squeak, does not account for the Disney copyright.
Probably because Alan Kay and the rest of the formerly Apple Smalltalk
gang are now at Disney. So is Danny Hillis (Thinking Machines founder).
Disney now has some very heavy hitting computing talent, and I can't tell
if they plan to do some innovative work in that space, or they just
realized that fun is what motivates these guys, so they put them to work
on theme park stuff.
-- Doug
7:03 a.m.
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10:22 a.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
One of the most depressing things I've done recently was buy a number of
books (some second-hand, some new) with titles like 'The boy mechanic',
'Every boy his own mechanic', etc.
OK, so the titles are sexist, and I do believe that's wrong, and that
there's no reason why girls shouldn't also be interested in this sort of
thing.
<stepping on soapbox>
I don't know what it is like in the UK, but here in the states, this
"sexist" revolution seems to be more of a we vs them type of confrontation
rather than working together. Publications such as "Womans this" and
"That
for Women" seem to be coming more popular, while "Mens this" and "That
for
Men" seem to be decried as sexist. The battle for "equality" seems to be
more lip service and rationalization than anything else.
<stepping off soapbox and back more on topic>
Some of the early electronic stories (Carl and Jerry from Popular
Electronics for one) seemed oriented towards building a curiosity about how
things work. I found I enjoyed very much the early Tom Swift books for much
the same reason. Back in 1975-76, the first very low cost chips started to
become available, and made it easier to work with almost state-of-the-art
stuff. I remember a special order of the 6800, 8 memory chips, and I
believe a couple of support chips being made available for $20 or so
(cosmetic rejects.)
1:01 a.m.
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