Identification of an old machine

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu Mar 27 15:28:00 2003

> This is going to be rather difficult I think. In 1977 when I first went to
> high school, we had a visiting computer science teacher (the school didn't
> own it's own computer). He used to come in with a PET mostly, but one day he
> couldn't bring the PET so came in with this old machine which was roughly
> cubic, each side about 2 foot. On the front it had a wiring panel where you
> had to plug in patch leads, and a rotary dial like on old telephones which
> was used to dial the numbers in. I don't remember how it displayed its
> results.
>
> Being a first year student and never faced with a computer before I had no
> idea what to do with it, and so don't remember much about it. However, now
> I'm intrigued - what was that beast? Does anyone have any ideas?

Are you sure it was a computer? And not a digital electronics 'trainer'?

There was a popular-ish school digital electronics trainer in the UK that
fits most of your description. It wasn't cubical, it was flat -- about 2'
long, 1' wide and a few inches high. There was a rotary telephone dial,
light bulbs, and patch sockets on the front. Inside were 5 or 6
flip-flops and a number of gates connected to the patch sockets. There
may have been other circuits, like a clock oscillator, monostables, etc too.

You could patch them together to make counters, shift registers,
combinatorial circuits, etc. Some of the 'applications' were quite fun
(there were certainly simple games for it, for example).

-tony
Received on Thu Mar 27 2003 - 15:28:00 GMT