franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) (03/13/86)
If you're really looking for impressive pieces of obsolete computers, try to get a front panel for an IBM 1620. Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka Multimate International 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108
dts@cullvax.UUCP (Daniel T Senie) (03/17/86)
> If you're really looking for impressive pieces of obsolete computers, try > to get a front panel for an IBM 1620. > > Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka > Multimate International 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108 My high school (grad in 79) HAD a 1620. The best use for the front panel was playing music. That's right, MUSIC! Someone had written a program to make the neon lights on the front panel blink at the right rates to make a nearby AM radio play tunes. You actually fed in your particular composition on punch cards. As each card was read the music played. (File this under Early Computer Composition). -- Daniel T. Senie TEL.: (617) 329-7700 x3168 Cullinet Software, Inc. UUCP: seismo!{ll-xn,harvard}!rclex!cullvax!dts 400 Blue Hill Drive ARPA: rclex!cullvax!dts@ll-xn.ARPA Westwood, MA 02090-2198
bmw@aesat.UUCP (Bruce Walker) (03/18/86)
In article <1204@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes: >If you're really looking for impressive pieces of obsolete computers, try >to get a front panel for an IBM 1620. I have a front panel for an IBM 650, which came out in 1956. This was a "bi-quinary" based decimal machine and displayed on hundreds of NE-51 neon bulbs. I hooked up some of them to a random "blinky" circuit (back when I was young and silly) and created a marvelous bit of "art". BTW, for the CISC bashers out there, this machine has/had an instruction to read the next column off of the card reader into a register. I believe it also could "boot from card(s)" in one instruction (this is not confirmed). Bruce Walker {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!aesat!bmw "I'd feel a lot worse if I wasn't so heavily sedated." -- Spinal Tap
dougp@ism780 (03/21/86)
Actually the lights blinking was just an artifact of the loops being executed to make the proper rf noise that the AM radio could pick up... And the lights were incandescant not neon, but what the hay? I find it interesting to note that the music generator and compiler programs were IBM *products*! Doug Pintar at InterActive Systems