[TUHS] SDF Beget's ICM - Interim Computer Museum

[TUHS] SDF Beget's ICM - Interim Computer Museum

[Clem Cole]

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Please excuse the wide distribution, but I suspect this will have general
interest in all of these communities due to the loss of the LCM+Labs.

The good folks from SDF.org are trying to create the Interim Computer
Museum:
https://icm.museum/join.html

As Lars pointed out in an earlier message to COFF there is a 1hr
presentation on the plans for the ICM.
https://toobnix.org/w/ozjGgBQ28iYsLTNbrczPVo

FYI: The yearly (Bootstrap) subscription is $36
They need to money to try to keep some of these systems online and
available.  The good news is that it looks like many of the assets, such as
Miss Piggy, the Multics work, the Toads, and others, from the old LCM are
going to be headed to a new home.
ᐧ

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[TUHS] Re: SDF Beget's ICM - Interim Computer Museum

[Gregg Levine]

Hello!
Pardon me for asking Clem, but would you mind naming the survivors? I
have an idea what these Toads are, and of course what Multics happened
to be, but that's it.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."

-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."


On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 2:10 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
> Please excuse the wide distribution, but I suspect this will have general interest in all of these communities due to the loss of the LCM+Labs.
>
> The good folks from SDF.org are trying to create the Interim Computer Museum:
> https://icm.museum/join.html
>
> As Lars pointed out in an earlier message to COFF there is a 1hr presentation on the plans for the ICM.   https://toobnix.org/w/ozjGgBQ28iYsLTNbrczPVo
>
> FYI: The yearly (Bootstrap) subscription is $36
> They need to money to try to keep some of these systems online and available.  The good news is that it looks like many of the assets, such as Miss Piggy, the Multics work, the Toads, and others, from the old LCM are going to be headed to a new home.
> ᐧ

[TUHS] Re: SDF Beget's ICM - Interim Computer Museum

[Lars Brinkhoff]

I think this is off topic for TUHS and more appropriate for COFF.

Gregg Levine wrote:
> Pardon me for asking Clem, but would you mind naming the survivors? I
> have an idea what these Toads are, and of course what Multics happened
> to be, but that's it.

We don't know exactly yet, but according to the video, there's a VAX
7000 and a DEC-2020.  The TOAD computers are XKL's PDP-10 remake;
there's also another one called SC-40.  Stephen also mentions Multics
tapes were rescued.

Maybe the best way to see what is there right now, is to dial into
"ssh menu@sdf.org"

[-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-]
-+-  SDF Vintage Systems               REMOTE ACCESS  -+-
[-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-]

[a] multics             Multics MR12.8          Honeywell 6180
[b] toad-2              TOPS-20 7(110131)-1     XKL TOAD-2
[c] twenex              TOPS-20 7(63327)-6      XKL TOAD-2
[d] sc40                TOPS-20 7(21733)        SC Group SC40
[e] lc                  ITS ver 1648            PDP-10 KS10
[f] ka1050              TOPS-10 6.03a           sim KA10 1050
[g] kl2065              TOPS-10 7.04            sim KL10 2065
[h] rosenkrantz         OpenVMS 7.3             VAX 7000-640
[i] tss8                TSS/8                   PDP-8/e
[j] ibm4361             VM/SP5                  Hercules 4361
[k] ibm7094             CTSS                    i7094
[l] cdc6500             NOS 1.3                 DTCyber CDC-6500
[z] bitzone             NetBSD BBS              AMD64

[1] Proceed to the UNIX Systems sub-menu
[2] Information about Vintage Systems at SDF.ORG

And the Unix section:

[a] misspiggy           UNIX v7                 PDP-11/70
[c] lcm3b2              UNIX SVR3.2.3           AT&T 3B2/1000-70
[d] guildenstern        BSD 4.3                 simh MicroVAX 3900
[e] snake               BSD 2.11                PDP-11/84
[f] hkypux              HP/UX 10.20             HP9000/715
[g] truly               TRU64 5.0               DEC Alpha 500au
[h] three               SunOS 4.1.1             Sun-3/160
[i] indy                IRIX 6.5                SGI Indy R5000
[j] ultra               Ultrix 4.5              simh MicroVAX 3900

[TUHS] Re: SDF Beget's ICM - Interim Computer Museum

[Clem Cole]

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Greg, this needs to move to COFF, so I'm BCCing TUHS in my reply. (My error
in the original message was that I should have BCC'd everyone but COFF, so
replies were directed there. Mei culpa).

However, since I have seen different people on all these lists bemoan the
loss of the LCM+L, I hope that by the broader announcement, a number of you
will consider the $36/yr membership to help Stephen and his team to be able
to keep these systems running and the at least the "labs" port of the old
LCM+L mission alive.

On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 9:56 PM Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello!
> Pardon me for asking Clem, but would you mind naming the survivors?

The details are still coming out from Stephen and friends -- I would
recommend listening to his presentation and then maybe joining the List
Server at SDF by sending a (plain text) email to majordomo@sdf.org  with
the subject and body containing the line: subscribe museum-l


I have an idea what these Toads are, and of course what Multics happened to
> be, but that's it.
>
LCM+L owned a real Honeywell 6180 front panel. The folks in their lab
interfaced it to a microcontroller (I think it was an RP3 or 4, but it
could be something like a BeagleBone, I never knew).  It was running
Multics Release 12.8 on a SimH-derived Honeywell 6180 [I'm not sure if
those changes ever made it back to OpenSIMH - I have not personally tried
it myself].   This system seems to have been moved to SDF's new site.
 Also, a number of the MIT Multics tapes had been donated to the LCM+L.
 These have survived, and the SDF has them.  I'll not repeat Stephen's
report here, but he describes what they have and are doing.
Miss Piggy is the PDP 11/70 that Microsoft purchased and used for their SW
original development.  It has been running a flavor of Unix Seventh Edition
- I do not know what type of updates were added, but I expect the DEC v7m
and the V7 addendum to be there.  You can log in and try it yourself by ssh
menu@sdf.org"  and picking Miss Piggy in the UNIX submenu.   Miss Piggy
used to live and be on display at the LCM+L, but Stephen and the SDF were
involved in its admin/operation. Stephen says in his presentation that they
are trying to get Miss Piggy back up and running [my >>guess<< is that the
"Miss Piggy" instance on the SDF menu is currently running on an OpenSIMH
instance while the real hardware is being set up at the new location].

In the early 1980s, as DEC started to de-commit to the 36-bit line after
they introduced the 32-bit Vax systems, a number of PDP-10 clones appeared
on the market.  For instance, the System Concepts SC-40 was what
Comp-U-Serve primarily switched to.  Similarly, many ex-Stanford AI types
forked to create the Toad Systems XXL, a KL10 clone.  SDF and LCM+L owned
several of these two styles of systems and were on display and available
for login.   Since Twenex.org is live (and has been) and Stephen shows a
picture of the SC40, again, I am (again) >>guessing<< that these have all
been moved to the new location for SDF.

Stephen mentioned in his presentation that they have the LCM-L's Vax7000
but do not yet have the 3-phase power in their computer room. He suggested
that it is one of the most popular machines in the SDF menu, and they
intend to make it live shortly.

It is unclear what became of some of the other items.   It was pointed out
that running a CDC6500 is extremely expensive to operate from a power
standpoint, so they offer an NOS login using the DTCyber simulator.   He
never mentioned what became of the former Purdue machine that the LCM owned
and had restored.

I am interested in knowing what happened to the two PDP-7s.  I know that at
least one was privately owned, but was being restored and displayed at the
LCM+L.   It was one of these systems that Unix V0 was resurrected and ran
for the UNIX 50th Anniversary Party that the LCM+L hosted.   The LCM+L had
some interesting peripherals.  For instance, the console for Miss Piggy was
a somewhat rare ASR37 [which is Upper/Lower case and the "native" terminal
for Research Unix].  I hope they have it also.   The LCM+L had a number of
different types of tape transports for recovering old data. Stephen
mentioned that they have some of these but did not elaborate.

Clem

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