🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <p4gdso$2o91$1...@gal.iecc.com>, John Levine  <jo...@taugh.com> wrote:
>In article <10019e38-01f7-496b...@googlegroups.com>,
> <hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>>On Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at 9:22:47 AM UTC-5, Peter Flass wrote:
>>The only computer museum I know of is the one in California*,
>
>The National Museum of American History in DC, part of the
>Smithsonian, has a large computer collection, better in some ways than
>the computer museum.

Yeah,  but the blinking light pattern on the 11/40 (or was it a '45)
at the Smithsonian is completely wrong.  There's obviously just some light
sequencer and a microprocessor feeding the display (supposedly a NASA
box monitoring flight data -- IIRC).  At least that was what I thought
back in the 90's when I was there.

It had a light pattern that didn't match any of the DEC OS's and didn't look
like any of the 11's in operation.

>
>There's also plenty of smaller museums.  One I've been to is the
>InfoAge museum in Wall NJ, which has a small but interesting
>collection.  They're in the process of restoring the PDP-8 we used in
>the RESISTORS.
>
>http://vcfed.org/wp/
>

The Wall, NJ site is also known as the Evans area on some old signs.
This was a part of Fort Monmouth.... and my old DEC stomping
grounds as a Field Engineer.  

All gone now.  Closed as part of BRAC base closing process.
Evans was a site with some serious environmental problems.  Took a while
to clean it up...   site began as a very early transatlantic radio
site for Marconi Wireless...  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Evans_Historic_District

Interesting to see how much of this area was used for early radio, radar,
satelite tracking.  Twin Lights, Deal Test Site (now a park), Evans Area.
The Nike sites along the coast... Fort Hancock...

I screwed up a customers RT11 sysgen at the Evans area back around 1985-6.
Never, never try to gen in multiterminal support and and the LS serial printer
interface at the same address/vector.  Duh.  Nice crashes.

I did the sysgen as a favor (on my PDT 11/150 at home or on the later 11/23)
and brought the software in to the customer.  Bad move... kernel crashed on 
terminal powerup on the 2nd port.  DEC might've canned my butt if they 
knew I did that for the customer... Officially, hardware guys shouldn't 
do sysgens 8-) but it seemed like fun at the time.

One Email -- problem fixed. 8-)  No Remedy tickets.  No having to go through
outsourced level x support with no idea what you're working on.

Those were the days when you could buy a beer for a support person and they'd
do you a favor and give you a hand.

I bought plenty of drinks and breakfast for those long overnight work nights.

Fixed it in a day or so thanks to Megan Gentry back then.

It was good to meet folks in Ma. while up at DEC Training on Crosby Drive.
I got connected while picking up surplus PDP11 stuff as an employee at
Maynard when in training.  Bought a bunch of Qbus memory some of which  
went in an 11/23 I bought from a customer who replaced it after a building 
fire. 

>R's,
>John
>-- 
>Regards,
>John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
>Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

Sounds like you're not too far from the area.


Bill