Stanford's PDP-6

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Al Kossow
> Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 8:32 AM

> I'm resending this with a revised title so someone has a chance of finding
> this again in the future. I sent a similar message to alt.sys.pdp10 when
> the subject came up last time.

Hmm.  I don't recall seeing your contribution on this in alt.sex.pdp10,
or we'd have discussed it there.

My comments below are not intended as any kind of rebuttal, but as an
exploration of how controversies such as this can arise.  Please bear
with me.

                                                                Rich

Al Kossow wrote:

> Brent Hilpert wrote:

>> Rich Alderson wrote:

>>> On the other hand, the last PDP-6 in existence was destroyed by the
>>> Computer Museum in Boston about 20 years ago, so you're one up there.

>> OK, I don't think I've heard this story.

>> Someone contributing to Wikipedia seems to want to tangentially
>> counter it, without explaining the background story.

> That would be me, a CHM employee, that has access to all of the Boston
> museum collection records. I have spoken to several of the staff
> members who were there at the time. I have been trying to find ANY
> evidence this occurred, and have not been able to.

> CHM has the fast memory box from Stanford's PDP-6. It came from the
> Compaq donation to CHM of what they had in >> DEC's << internal
> collection, and was NOT donated to the Boston Museum. As best as I've
> been able to determine, the 6 was sent to a DEC warehouse after the
> anniversary at DECUS, and sat there until what was there was sent to
> CHM. Since there is no record of this machine going to the Boston
> museum, nor does anyone there that I have talked to remember it coming
> there, it would have been difficult for them to have dismantled
> it. Every major donation to the Computer Museum was cataloged. I cannot
> find anything for Stanford's PDP-6 in their records or in the Museum
> Report, which at the time listed every donation they received.

> I would like to find someone INSIDE of DEC that saw it in while
> it was in the warehouse, but I haven't been able to locate anyone yet.

> The rumor of the Museum destroying the system started because their
> gift shop was selling modules, including the ALU modules from the
> PDP-6. I have been told these were from a collection of DEC module
> spares that DEC donated. I haven't been able to determine the earliest
> that they were being sold. If it was before the anniversary, they
> obviously could not have been from Stanford's machine.

I can address part of the controversy, but in a court it would be ruled
hearsay testimony.

The Stanford AI Lab PDP-6 was dismantled and shipped to Anaheim for the
20th anniversary of 36-bit computing at Digital.  I was offered the
opportunity to visit the system at the D. C. Power Laboratory by the
Director of the LOTS Computing Facility, who was a grad student at SAIL
at one time, on the day of the dismantlement.  We met the Director of the
Computer Science Dept. computer facility, and they entered a display hack
for the console lights into the ACs, discovering that one AC was not
working in the process and working around it.  This program was used at
DECUS so that it wasn't just a hunk of metal and sand standing there.

Several years later, a well-known member of the 36-bit community was in
Boston, and visited the Computer Museum, which had been given (as the
entire DECUS community, not just 36-bitters, understood it) the entirety
of the DEC corporate museum's collection, including the PDP-6.  The -6
was not on display, and modules recognizably of a -6 were on sale in the
museum shop.  Queries were made, and a reasonable conclusion was drawn
based on the Computer Museum's de-emphasis of anything earlier than the
IBM PC in their exhibits in conjunction with the disappearance of the
SAIL PDP-6 from all human ken.

Perhaps we all jumped to an erroneous conclusion, but the fact that no
one at Digital (and there was still a Digital at that point) knew where
the PDP-6 was, if not at the Computer Museum, made it a very very short
leap.

As I said above, I have never, in the past 20 years, had anyone step
forward to correct, or to dispute, or even to augment, the story as I
heard it first hand from the shocked lips of the museum visitor, until
now.  Given the data Al has set forth about collection records for the
Computer Museum, the DEC corporate museum, etc., I will no longer state
as probable fact the story of the disappearance of the SAIL PDP-6, but I
will return a verdict of "Not Proven" rather than "Not Guilty" with 
respect to the Computer Museum.

> Because of this controversy, CHM has a policy that no artifacts will
> ever be offered for sale to the public. Items that are deacessioned are
> offered only to other non-profit institutions.

That is best practice in the museum world at large, of course.  Look at
the controversy surrounding the Brandeis University decision to sell the
Rose Art Museum collection:

        http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/27/brandeis


Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104

mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
(206) 342-2239
(206) 465-2916 cell

http://www.pdpplanet.org/