Computer History Museum's YouTube Channel

Doctor-R writes "The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA has created a new YouTube channel for videos of their lecture series. Newest is the Dec 10 panel on the 25th Anniversary of the Commodore 64. Currently there are 23 lectures available and the 7-minute Museum overview."

Early computing

[Sanat]

I started my computer career in 1962 working as a systems analyst. Later in 1970 worked with the CDC 3200 mainframe. The basic timing mechanism was a delay line that sent a "0" down it with various taps for read, write, gating, etc that the magnetic core memory and associated electronics required.

We would run margins on the computer by setting the voltage low and test it then setting the voltage high and retest to verify that it would pass diagnostics under both conditions.

The toughest thing i ever did was rewire a memory board by hand to replace a broken ferrite core. It required unlacing the diagonal "Z" sense wire and then removing the x and y wires plus the inhibit x wire and then reinstalling the wiring. Fortunately I was nearsighted and could see the fine wires but today I would have problems even seeing a core since I am now very far sighted.

Every job that I have ever had was like a game for me. I would have paid someone to allow me to do what i got paid to do. that sure makes time fly though.

I worked with Dr. Wang at Wang Laboratories and traveled to China with him to meet his siblings. While there I installed some of the very first mini-computers/mainframe for China. We slowed the rpm of the disk drives down from 3600 to 2400 and then installed high altitude heads to keep the disk's heads from crashing. Also the seek flip-flop in the logic had a bigger capacitor on it so that after the heads settled from moving then the read/write cycle could occur. By adding the extra capacitance slowed the access time down greatly so that China would not be on parity with us,

That has been a career of 45 years which is far older than most individual who read Slashdot. My 4H project when I was 13 or 14 was building a ham transmitter and modulator. That was back in the 50's.

I was one of the original geeks and today could not stay up with what the average individual on slashdot needs to know... it is just too much information now, but I do enjoy those that post here and those that actually enjoy the coding and the fixing of equipment for it shows in your posts.

With

[Weaselmancer]

Or, they could make an actual 3D museum, sort of like google earth, only inside. Now THAT would be awesome.

With emulations of the machines at each display point. Not too difficult to do these days. Use this [mess.org], or maybe something like this. [dreamfabric.com]