From: jtkare@ibm.net (Jordin Kare) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: PDP-1X (Was Re: where can I find a Cray or other mainframes?) Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1998 17:01:10 -0800 Organization: Sirius Connections Lines: 61 Message-ID: References: <71ue2d$jee$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <71uh7p$194m$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <7215bg$rlj$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <721c44$u6s$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp-asok06--086.sirius.net Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!isdnet!howland.erols.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news1.best.com!newshub.sirius.com!newsfiler.sirius.com!ppp-asok06--086.sirius.net!user In article <721c44$u6s$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu>, dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel) wrote: > The only PDP-1 I know of is also at the Computer Museum in Moffett Field. > (There may be others, but if there are, their owners are VERY quiet.) The PDP-1 at the Computer Museum's storage facility at Moffett Field is the PDP-1X. It was donated by DEC to MIT in the mid-1960's, one of the first computers donated to a university by a manufacturer. It was retired by MIT in the mid-1970's, and acquired in 1976 by the MIT Electronics Research Society (MITERS); I was Erstwhile President of MITERS at the time. MITERS traded it to the newly-formed DEC Museum in '77, in exchange for some rather more current DEC hardware including a then-state-of-the-art PDP-11/03 (LSI-11). The DEC Museum became the Boston Computer Museum a couple of years later. The 1X was a highly-atypical PDP-1, since it was hardware-hacked by a decade of MIT students. A "standard" PDP-1 occupied 4 equipment racks; the 1X occupied, as I recall, about 19. That included 4 racks of core memory (4K x 18 bits per rack) interconnected by one of the very first memory busses: huge bundles of coax cables running between racks. When the Museum acquired it, they sent a trucking company to pick up "a DEC minicomputer" -- two guys showed up with a panel van. They took one look at the 1X and said, "I think we need to call our boss..." > It ran occasionally when it was still in Boston (I think they last turned it > on in 1997 (?) for the 25th anniversary of Spacewar.) It ran intermittently. A close friend from my MITERS days, Geoff Rochat, still lives in the Boston area, and on one occasion startled the Museum staff by stepping over the guard rope, wiggling a couple of cards (known in the MITERS days to have flaky connectors) and getting the presumed-dead 1X to load and run Spacewar... > I doubt it's running > now. When I first saw it in California, two years ago, it was a bunch of > teeny module cards all piled up in a cardboard box. (These modules were DEC's > pride and joy for their first 2 decades or so. They're little circuit boards > with a few SSI or MSI integrated circuits on them. Umm, sorry. DEC System Modules used in the PDP-1 used discrete germanium transistors. Of course, the 1X, by the time it went to the Museum, had everything from original System Modules to MSI TTL hooked into it. > > Someone on the CLASSICCMP mailing list is > trying to find more info about an IMLAC PDS-1 which may be a PDP-1 clone. > (Or it may not -- it may be a PDP-8 clone; he's not sure.) Not a PDP-1 clone; possibly an -8 clone. If you're in the > video-game business, you know about the arcade version of Spacwar which IIRC > has a PDP-1 inside. As noted above, a -1 occupied 4 19" racks. The original arcade Spacewar was definitely NOT PDP-1 based. Ah, for the Good Old Days when Men were Men and Transistors were Germanium Jordin Kare ###### From: "The XO" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <71ue2d$jee$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <71uh7p$194m$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <7215bg$rlj$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <721c44$u6s$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> Subject: Re: PDP-1X (Was Re: where can I find a Cray or other mainframes?) Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:23:25 +1030 Lines: 23 Organization: Headquarters X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.71.1712.3 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.71.1712.3 NNTP-Posting-Host: netcafe.pirie.mtx.net.au Message-ID: <3646c9ad.0@news.mtx.net.au> X-Trace: 9 Nov 1998 21:23:33 -1050, netcafe.pirie.mtx.net.au Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsgate.cistron.nl!het.net!news.tele2.nl!newsfeed1.swip.net!swipnet!newsfeed.cwix.com!139.130.250.2!intgwpad.nntp.telstra.net!news1.optus.net.au!optus!yorrell.saard.net!duster.adelaide.on.net!news.saix.saia.asn.au!news.mtx.net.au!netcafe.pirie.mtx.net.au Jordin Kare wrote in message ... >In article <721c44$u6s$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu>, >dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel) wrote: >Ah, for the Good Old Days when Men were Men and Transistors were Germanium If the men leaked as badly as the germanium transistors they must have been interesting times indeed. ;^) Cheers Computer Room Internet Cafe Port Pirie South Australia Spam countermeasures netcafe at pirie dot mtx dot net dot au ###### From: jtkare@ibm.net (Jordin Kare) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: PDP-1X (Was Re: where can I find a Cray or other mainframes?) Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1998 18:47:09 -0800 Organization: Sirius Connections Lines: 11 Message-ID: References: <71ue2d$jee$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <71uh7p$194m$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <7215bg$rlj$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <721c44$u6s$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <3646c9ad.0@news.mtx.net.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp-asok05--052.sirius.net Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!cyclone.news.idirect.com!island.idirect.com!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.slip.net!news1.best.com!newshub.sirius.com!newsfiler.sirius.com!ppp-asok05--052.sirius.net!user In article <3646c9ad.0@news.mtx.net.au>, "The XO" wrote: > Jordin Kare wrote in message ... > >Ah, for the Good Old Days when Men were Men and Transistors were Germanium > > If the men leaked as badly as the germanium transistors they must have been > interesting times indeed. > It all depended on what voltage you applied to them :-] Jordin (I'm not biased) Kare ###### From: eugene@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: PDP-1X Date: 13 Nov 1998 08:12:49 GMT Organization: UC Santa Cruz CIS/CE Lines: 40 Message-ID: <72gpm1$6dc@darkstar.ucsc.edu> References: <71ue2d$jee$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <7215bg$rlj$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <721c44$u6s$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: arapaho.cse.ucsc.edu Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news.ucsc.edu!eugene In article , Jordin Kare wrote: >Ah, for the Good Old Days when Men were Men and Transistors were Germanium Hey Jordan! 8^) A favorite quote: Determining what impurities caused N-type silicon proved to be more involved. Scaff and Theurer had noticed a peculiar odor whenever they broke predominantly N-type ingots out of quartz tubes. So did Ohl when he cut them with his diamond wheel. According to Brattain, this odor was "very much like the smell you used to have on these acetylene lamps that you had in automobiles before [they] used electric lights." Theurer recognized that this odor was not due to acetylene itself, however, but to tiny traces of phosphine gas that occurred because of impurities of phosphorous -- an element slightly heavier than silicon and just to the right of the periodic table -- in the acetylene. "By their noses they were detecting concentrations of phosphorous way below the spectroscopic limit," marveled Brattain. The minute phosphorous impurities had migrated to the center of the solidifying ingots, gathering there to produce N-type silicon. --Michael Riordan/Lillian Hoddeson Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age, 1997. Research is made up by people who have a certain amount of larceny in their nature. And I was a dangerous man to deal with because they would say something that would give me a little information, and I could convert it into patentable material." --Russell Ohl It is better to have one seven foot jumper than any number of six foot jumpers. --Frederick Terman, Steeples of excellence The only regret I have about the transistor is its use for rock and roll music. I still have my rifle and sometimes when I hear that noise I think I could shoot them all.