*** Ideas needed for developing interactive displays....

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu Sep 9 17:25:34 2004

> > > Yes we are planning on having the hp 2000 emulator!
> > > cheaper to have tsb this way compared to running the whole system which will
> >
> > Whereas the machine that runs the emulator will never need repair?
>
> That's when you throw it out and get another one, though! (Sorry,
> indulging in a bit of "Tony baiting" there ;-)

And do you really believe you will always be able to find a machine that
can run your simulator?

>
> On a serious note though, a museum might not have a complete old machine
> (of whatever type) - experience is that for the big stuff things tend to
> arrive as parts here and there, so often all there is may be a rack with
> bits missing, or a console for a mainframe etc.

Given the time and resources (OK, I know both are short) you could always
do what it done in most clock museums and make/substitute the missing
parts only (in the case of clocks, the replacement parts are often marked
by being a slgihtly different colour/finish -- they look right at first
glance, but you can tall which bits are replacements if you need to).

Incidentally, it always impresses me how many clock museums keep their
exhibits running (in most cases about 70% of the clocks are still running
in my experience). And they're not faked!

I would think it was reasonable to run a classic CPU with a modern disk
drive _if the original drive was not availale_, provided no permanent
changes were made to the classic CPU (for example it would be OK to plug
in a recent interface card).

> Even then having the original working might not be practical though -
> whilst the skills might be there to fix the hardware, the time might not
> be. That's all too common at Bletchley; even if I have the skills to fix
> items there's only one of me (and sometimes less than that :) - the best

There would be a second one of you (well. OK, not quite :-)) if BP had
not done all it could to drive me mad. I am not talking about having to
keep to a conservation policy (in fact one of my moans is that there was
no proper conservation poiicy), it was more things like sometimes being
charged to go in, not being able to claim the cost of components (OK, a
couple of chips doesn't cost much, but I don't see why _I_ should pay for
parts in their machines), the policy of rading fuses, cables, etc from
whatever machine was nearest, the fact that I wasn't allowed to look
through the documentation, and so on. I gave up, as I have plenty of my
own machines to work on.

-tony
Received on Thu Sep 09 2004 - 17:25:34 BST