KL-10B in DEC-20 [was RE: Who's rewired their house for this hobby?]

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Rich Alderson

    > Yes, MIT-AI. We purchased it from CZ, who rescued it from the AILab
    > skip, then from the Symbolics skip, then eventually sold it on eBay
    > when he had to. It still has the MIT de-acquisition sticker on the
    > front panel.

Wow! That machine still exists? I'm pretty blown away! I was the person who
got the donation of the 3 KS's for MIT, actually!

IIRC correctly, I heard that DEC was giving tham away, or something like that
(I think they had an over-supply when they decided to turn off PDP-10
support), and I thought it would be cool to have some - MIT was turning off
the KA-10 ITS machines at that point (too much space, too costly to maintain,
etc, etc), and the KL MC clearly wasn't long for the world either (ditto).

So I talked to people at MIT about how to do it, and someone talked to people
at DEC (our salesman, IIRC), and I wound up writing a letter, which Dave
Clark signed, explaining how ITS was a really significant system historically
(giving the details on why), and how it would be great it DEC could donate a
couple of these machines so it could continue to run, etc, etc.

So three machines duly arrived, and I thought they were so cute (small little
boxes) I decided they should be named after the three little droids in
"Silent Running" (Huey, Duey and Louie) - so if you look inside the front
door you should be able to find "MIT-HY" or "MIT-DY" or "MIT-LY" written
somewhere in permanent marker. Alas, nobody else liked the idea, so they were
given recycled names. Pissed me off no end (since they machines wouldn't even
have been there, if not for me)!

    >> ITS is an amazing system, and although there are a few running on
    >> simulators, I'm not sure anyone has it running on real hardware.
    >> That would be Very Cool.

    > I agree. As I noted in my response .. I'm working on it. :-)

Excellent news! Thanks!

	Noel