johnl@marque.mu.edu (John Ledan) (06/17/88)
A friend and I have access to an ENIAC computer, and although it's in pretty sad state, we think we can get it going provided we can get some help and information about it. Where is the best place to discuss these computers, grepping through the spool directories here showed some technical talk in news.stargate, which seems to have gone *poof* (why?) recently, and a bunch of noise in news.*, which given the content of late could be renamed noise.* :-) Any suggestions ? And thanks in advance. --John
webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) (06/18/88)
In article <198@marque.mu.edu>, johnl@marque.mu.edu (John Ledan) writes: > A friend and I have access to an ENIAC computer, and although > it's in pretty sad state, we think we can get it going provided > we can get some help and information about it. Yes, it can be quite difficult to get good documentation on the ENIAC. The more I read of the literature, the more convinced I am that most of the people who set out to describe it have never programmed it. It is amusing to trace the cribbing of author upon author back to the original 1946 10 page note in Mathematical Tables and Aids To Computation by the Goldstine's. While that note was useful for introducing numerical analysts to the power of the new machine, it is quite inadequate for the anyone directly working with the ENIAC (comparable to trying to use UNIX after reading Ritchie and Thompson's 1974 CACM paper -- a nice overview but no replacement for a systems manual). I expect to soon post a more definitive description of the ENIAC architecture, but for now, you might want to get a copy of Burks' From ENIAC to the Stored- Program Computer: Two Revolutions in Computers which appeared in A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century -- A Collection of Essays edited by N. Metropolis, J. Howlett, and Gian-Carlo Rota (Academic Press, 1980). > Where is the best place to discuss these computers,... > Any suggestions ? And thanks in advance. Currently comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac is the best place to discuss them as it is the only eniac-related group that the net has voted to create. Connectivity has been awkward for this group as Spafford is currently opposed to the addition of any computer-related groups to comp.*. The easiest way to establish connectivity between your site and whichever nearby sites carry comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac is to issue a newgroup command for it. Since it is an unmoderated group, this should cause no problems. -------- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)
adb@alice.UUCP (06/24/88)
If you *really* want info on the ENIAC, go to the library of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, which still has all the original design documents for the ENIAC on the shelf. However, I suspect they won't be that useful, since there was only one ENIAC and it has long since been dismantled and scattered. Alan Berenbaum AT&T Bell Labs ihnp4!research!adb
webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) (06/25/88)
In article <8012@alice.UUCP>, adb@alice.UUCP writes: > If you *really* want info on the ENIAC, go to the library of the Moore > School of Electrical Engineering, which still has all the original design Well it looks like eventually I will have to visit the U Penn (I presume the Moore School is in Philadelphia with the rest of it). [I hate travel and big cities, but c'est la vie.] The 1945-1955 period in the history of computing is chock full of fascinating documents as some very major thinkers came to grips with the notion of computing. The ENIAC seems to have been the only major attempt at a parallel computer during this time period [at least one author has noted that the ILLIAC is more closely the successor of the ENIAC than either the EDVAC or the BINIAC (the latter two being more reactions against the percieved problems with the ENIAC by the designers of it rather than attempts to ``upgrade'' it)]. > documents for the ENIAC on the shelf. However, I suspect they won't be that > useful, since there was only one ENIAC and it has long since been dismantled > and scattered. The BRL machine was dismantled and scattered to various museums on 2nd day of October in the year 1955. Whether or not any other machines were ever made from that design is something that would be difficult to prove (except, of course, in the positive by an example). So far no published references have come to my attention. However, the documents would still prove useful. A software simulation of the machine requires rather detailed knowledge of its hardware. A hardware simulation is, at the moment, just a dream -- but the resources are available if I can just find the time to master them (a direct VLSI implementation is my current ``ultimate'' goal). A design for microcode that is functionally equivalent to ``wiring up'' the ENIAC is still in progress. ---- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)