Retro-Computing Society of RI

05/29/2021

Existential retro-computing thought of the day:

"In ancient Greece, there was a legendary king named Theseus who supposedly founded the city of Athens. Since he fought many naval battles, the people of Athens dedicated a memorial in his honor by preserving his ship in the port. This “ship of Theseus” stayed there for hundreds of years. As time went on, some of the wooden planks of Theseus’ ship started rotting away. To keep the ship nice and complete, the rotting planks were replaced with new planks made of the same material. Here is the key question: If you replace one of the planks, is it still the same ship of Theseus?"

What if you replace 49.9% ? or 50.1% ??

99.999% ???

The ancient thought experiment of the "problem of identity" resonates through the ages with great relevance to our hobby...
..or maybe we're just frustrated by a search for new old stock components for a restoration.

Where does consciousness exist, and what is the reality of our soul if we question the basis of personal identity?

11/20/2020

Our public open house events are cancelled until further notice. We've had two positive cases in the building during the last couple of weeks. It is doubtful that we'll resume this year.

11/18/2020

We had planned to schedule visits of just a few people at a time by appointment only through the end of the year. Today we learned that someone renting a space next door tested positive. (Our zip code has the most cases in the state) We're going to put a hold on accepting visitors for the next 2 or 3 weeks. We'll post updates in Dec. as we learn more about the local situation.

11/17/2020

Our public open house Sat. Nov. 21 is cancelled due to a local increase in covid.

06/21/2020

Today we held our first by-invite-only open house since February. We gave tours of the collection to a half dozen guests during the course of the afternoon.

Starting on the next 3rd Saturday, July 18th from 1 to 8pm, we are resuming our monthly public open house schedule under strict social distancing guidelines. Everyone is expected to wear masks at all times and we will limit the number of visitors in our facility to fewer than 10 people at a time.

If you are considering a visit please see the RI Dept. of Health guidelines on reopening RI at https://health.ri.gov/covid/

06/15/2019

today's open open house will feature the HP 9830A circa 1972 - a BASIC system that blurs the line between calculator and computer (it has a hard drive with 14" platters)

The HP 9830A was the most powerful model of the original 9800 series calculators. It greatly blurred the lines between traditional computers and calculators due in part to its use of the BASIC programming language and options such as terminal emulation and a hard disk drive.

03/17/2019

How do you view the contents of a CPU register on a minicomputer that lacks a blinkenlicht console? By looking at the blips on an oscilloscope.

This is done on the Packard Bell 250, a 22 bit mini from 1961. One of our members discovered this curiosity while digitizing some of the gems in our library.

RCS Online Library We have scanned a large set of historically interesting manuals & documents over at the museum, and posted them online: https://www.rcsri.org/library/ We're not trying to post a complete reference section, but a select group of particularly interesting texts. Subjects include: ana...

03/15/2019

"Similarly, Friedlander took a number of marvelous photographs of the women who worked at Cray. To its credit, the Cantor tells us that company founder Seymour Cray personally hired these women to do the wiring in his supercomputers because of their skill in "weaving and fabric crafts," but you have to do your own research to learn that the first Cray computer had more than 60 miles of wire running through it, that each segment of wire was no longer than three inches (which is what helped make the supercomputer run so fast), that each $10-million machine took almost a year to assemble, and used as much power as 10 homes. In other words, wiring was a key aspect of building a Cray, which made this so-called "women's work" more important than the phrase, or even the photos, might suggest."

An exhibition of Lee Friedlander's 1986 photographs of Wisconsin's Cray Research supercomputer facility provides intriguing making-of shots, but little information on what's being made.

02/15/2019

A major feature story in exposes the once obscure history of women in computing to a larger audience.

Computer programming once had much better gender balance than it does today. What went wrong?

12/16/2018

Visit our online library to learn more about the Packard Bell Trice and PB-250 hybrid analog/digital computer system.