[Beowulf] A press release

[Lyle Bickley]

On Thursday 10 July 2008, Robert G. Brown wrote:
--snip--
> Aye, laddy, 'twas a PDP 1 with sense switches on the front that one did
> indeed toggle in the paper tape boot program (to get it to where it
> could read from other media), a green oscilloscope-style CRT for a
> monitor (complete with crosshatches IIRC), a real teletype console, and
> the ability to run simple fortran programs that did beam optic
> computations and displayed a simple visualization of same.  The PDP
> itself was quite large, and I was told that it "had a few bad bits..."
> but that they usually didn't affect the outcome of a computation.

I'm on the PDP-1 and IBM 1620 Restoration Teams at the Computer History Museum 
(see: http://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/). So if the PDP-1 was your first 
computer (and one NEVER forgets their first computer) you can see it in 
action (running Spacewar!, Minskytron, Music, etc.) at the CHM!

In fact, if your visiting Silicon Valley, I'll give you a private tour!

> I was kidding about the teeth, though.

;-)

> Next (if things go as they usually do) we all have to kid around about
> IBM 5100's and QIC (floppies are just plain too modern for me:-) but if
> I do that the Titorheads will attack and I'll have to once again
> unconvincingly deny that I am, in fact, John Titor.

Those of us who volunteer at the Computer History Museum feel we are "time 
traveler's" for sure...

Funny combination - setting up Beowulf clusters and restoring vintage 
computers. There must be a lesson here :-)

Cheers,
Lyle





>
>     rgb



-- 
Lyle Bickley
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
Mountain View, CA 94040
http://bickleywest.com

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"