Reproducing old machines with newer technology (Re: PDP-12 at the RICM)

[Dave G4UGM]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jay Jaeger
> Sent: 16 July 2015 01:56
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: Reproducing old machines with newer technology (Re: PDP-12 at
> the RICM)
> 
> Saul is indeed cited in the ACM article,
> 
> http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=365671
> 
> I know that Purdue had some folks that did their own maintenance, and
> sure, by the late 1960's one could certain pick them up cheap - the gold
> scrappers were not quite the issue they became later.  I know this because,
> besides the 7094 II that I did some work on (including replacing a germanium
> transistor with a modern silicon one at one point), the U. Wisconsin
> Chemistry department had a 7090 (oil core) on the 9th floor.  Some folks
> from Purdue came up at one point and helped fix a problem with it.
> 
> Around 1975 the IBM 1410 and the IBM 7094 II we played with at UW were
> sold to a company in Ohio - or at least pieces were.  Paul Pierce and I went
> back to that same company in 1998 and recovered some of the IBM
> 1410 and IBM 709x tapes that he lists on his site - Paul has an amazing setup
> where he reads the tapes *analog* using a 7 track drive, and then post-
> processes the results to de-skew and recover the data.
> 
> JRJ
> 

Apparently the School of Medicine, Manchester University, England were given a 7090 which they later connected to a PDP-8. A bit of googling turned this up :-

http://www.ukuug.org/newsletter/linux-newsletter/linux@uk12/dclark.shtml

sadly Dave passed away about a year ago, but he kept many tapes and card decks the which are with the TNMOC at Bletchly.

Dave


> On 7/15/2015 7:12 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> > On 07/15/2015 04:05 PM, Jay Jaeger wrote:
> >
> >> Paul adapted PUFFT (Purdue University Fast FORTRAN Translator) to do
> >> RS-232 bit serial I/O through a sense switch, and I wrote a spooling
> >> program that ran on a Datacraft 6024 located in the same room to do
> >> the card reading and printing.  I suppose somewhere inside of it the
> >> DC 6024 was humiliated - I expect that it was much faster than the
> >> 7094 II.  ;)
> >
> > I remember PUFFT--that was Saul Rosen's baby, wasn't it?  A FORTRAN
> > for undergrads--put in anything that *resembled* a FORTRAN statement
> > and get some sort of result.  Missing parentheses?  Misspelling?
> > Outright syntax errors? No problem.  I think Purdue had two 709x
> > systems for PUFFT  The CDC 6500 was reserved for Serious Work.
> >
> > I understand that at the time, 7090/7094's were comparatively
> > plentiful and (comparatively) inexpensive, hence their use.
> >
> >> Liquid nitrogen would be the "or worse" part.  ;)
> >
> > Neil had a lot of interesting stories about the ETA-10 (originally
> > named the GF-10 for the target of 10 gigaflops).  It all seemed so
> > fantastic back then.
> >
> > Ah, it's all fun...
> >
> > --Chuck
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >