> > Program the world's first computer!
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >The world's first computer program was run on June 21st 1948 on the
> >"baby" Mark1 at Manchester. As part of the celebrations to mark the 50th
> >....
>
> Could some of the list members with more historical knowledge comment
> on this? I thought the first "electronic digital computer" was the ABC -
> Atanasoff Berry Computer from 1939. This was verified in some high
> powered patent cases in '73 and '74, that concluded Sperry-Univac could
> not claim patents for the ideas from thier Univac machine ("43 or '44?).
> Honneywell, CDC, IBM, and others did not want to pay royalties to Sperry.
> The Sperry machine is the first "commercial" machine that was offered for
> sale.
Are you _sure_ the ABC was electronic? I was under the impression that
the 1930s machines were all (almost all?) relay computers. Konrad Zuse
is the pioneer whose name is oft mentioned here...
As I see it, the sequence of events is as follows:
The 1940s saw the valve (vacuum tube) computers begin to emerge - in
some order (still in debate) ENIAC, Univac and the hush-hush British
project, Colossus (hush-hush because it was part of the war effort), all
appeared in 1943 I think. Colossus currently claims to have been first,
but it is hard to verify with all the wartime secrecy that surrounded
it.
The Manchester machine claims to be the first _stored program_ machine.
It was the first electronic computer, and I think also the first
computer, to hold its software in main memory. It was far too small for
this to be sensible - the purpose was to demonstrate the principal of it
with a view to using similar hardware and software designs on larger
machines in the future. All previous machines had a main store for
data, and a programming panel for patch leads etc. to hold instructions.
Soon after the Manchester machine ran, the EDSAC project in Cambridge
pulled ahead with a large scale stored program (Von Neumann) machine.
Professor Wilkes, who ran this project, said in one talk he gave that
they had wanted to include floating point in EDASC, since it was already
available on many relay computers, but this had to wait until a later
design...
Philip.
Philip.Belben(a)powertech.co.uk wrote :
> Are you _sure_ the ABC was electronic? I was under the impression that
> the 1930s machines were all (almost all?) relay computers. Konrad Zuse
> is the pioneer whose name is oft mentioned here...
>
> As I see it, the sequence of events is as follows:
>
> The 1940s saw the valve (vacuum tube) computers begin to emerge - in
> some order (still in debate) ENIAC, Univac and the hush-hush British
> project, Colossus (hush-hush because it was part of the war effort), all
> appeared in 1943 I think. Colossus currently claims to have been first,
> but it is hard to verify with all the wartime secrecy that surrounded
> it.
All the "computers" prior to the Manchester machines did not store their
programs in memory, they are more accurately termed sequence controlled
calculators.
The Univac came later, it was actually first delivered in 1951, just a
month or so after Ferranti delivered the first commercial computer, the
Mark I to Manchester University in February 1951 - and no I don't
remember that particular event personally ;-).
> The Manchester machine claims to be the first _stored program_ machine.
> It was the first electronic computer, and I think also the first
> computer, to hold its software in main memory. It was far too small for
> this to be sensible - the purpose was to demonstrate the principal of it
> with a view to using similar hardware and software designs on larger
> machines in the future. All previous machines had a main store for
> data, and a programming panel for patch leads etc. to hold instructions.
Again yes, the Manchester machine had a main memory of 32 words each of
32 bits, it had one accumulator and an instruction set of only 6
instructions. It was built in 1948 to prove the reliability of the
Williams tube storage system.
The very same hardware was then extensively developed into a fully
fledged computer over the next two years. Ferranti, under a government
contract, built 6 or 7 production versions, the first of which went to
Manchester as stated above.
> Soon after the Manchester machine ran, the EDSAC project in Cambridge
> pulled ahead with a large scale stored program (Von Neumann) machine.
> Professor Wilkes, who ran this project, said in one talk he gave that
> they had wanted to include floating point in EDASC, since it was already
> available on many relay computers, but this had to wait until a later
> design...
Indeed, the interests of the Manchester team were in the hardware
design, the Cambridge team were more interested in the programming and
uses of computers.
So while Manchester developed hardware technologies, Cambridge developed
software.
Manchester has a long and illustrious history of firsts in the computing
area. As well as the first working stored program electronic computer,
they were the first to incorporate index registers, the first working
transistor computer, and the first virtual memory.
That is not to say that others were not working on the same or similar
lines, its just that Manchester managed to get there first, sometimes by
just a month or two.
More info about the Manchester machines and the rebuild project at
<http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/ssem/ssemhome.htm>
--
Hans B. Pufal : <mailto:hansp@digiweb.com>
Comprehensive Computer Catalogue : <http://www.digiweb.com/~hansp/ccc/>
_-_-__-___--_-____-_--_-_-____--_---_-_---_--__--_--_--____---_--_--__--_
Just thought people here might be interested...
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 00:19:31 GMT
From: chris(a)envex.demon.co.uk (Chris.P.Burton)
Reply-To: chris(a)envex.demon.co.uk
To: history-of-computing-uk(a)mailbase.ac.uk
Subject: Manchester Baby Programming Competition
Program the world's first computer!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The world's first computer program was run on June 21st 1948 on
the "baby" Mark1 at Manchester. As part of the celebrations to mark
the 50th anniversary of this event next year, we are holding a
competition to program the machine. The winner will have the
opportunity to run their program on the replica of the original
machine. For details of your chance to program the World's First
Stored Program Computer, see
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/prog98/
Information on the 1998 celebration in general is at
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/mark1/
Please forward this information to anybody you know who might be
interested - i.e. anybody you know with an interest in computing!
- --
Chris P Burton - A member of the Computer Conservation Society
------- End of Forwarded Message
I saw this in the Linux-8086/ELKS mailing list. Anyone know about this
card?
Thanks,
Marc
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Anyone ever heard of a a "VX/PC" card? I got one today
>from a junk bin, there are two full length 8 bit ISA cards
connected together; one is marked "VX/PC processor card"
and has an 80188 and some ROM and other chips, and the
other is "VX/PC memory card" and has a whole bunch of DRAMs.
There is another board attached to one of them marked "16.8
million color board" even. Any suggestions? I have not tried
installing one and seeing what comes out the video output yet.
thanks,
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt, StudIEAust hamish(a)debian.org, hmoffatt(a)mail.com
Student, computer science & computer systems engineering. 3rd year, RMIT.
http://hamish.home.ml.org/ (PGP key here) CPOM: [***** ] 56%
Your train has been cancelled due to defective government at Spring Street..
Does anyone have and Osborne Executive that will make a boot disk for my
machine? Please..
I have a complete set of Kaypro 10 original distribution software reload
disks if anyone would like these..
<Whatever the coprocessor for the 386 SX was, does anyone have one?
<
<I heard that (at one time) there was a software emulator for a
<coprocessor...anyone ever heard of it?
the numeric coprocessor is the 387. Software emulator? What that would be
is code in the application to perform those operations. there was a package
I believe that was loaded to enable programs that expect the 387
to run but emulation is very slow compared to the real thing. A faster
alternative is to run the version of the program that didn't require the
387.
387s are still available and common enough.
Allison
Due to network problems, anyone who send me e-mail this weekend saying
"I want one", please resend as I did not get it (or any other mail).
-Matt Pritchard
Graphics Engine and Optimization Specialist
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Pritchard [SMTP:MPritchard@EnsembleStudios.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 17, 1997 2:47 PM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: RE: Hard Drive Bible, 8th edition
>
> To help with questions I've asked, here's some info the Hard Drive
> Bible
> book.
> -----
> It says July, 1996. It seems to cover older drives, up to the first
> one
> and two gig drives. in the "hard drive peramters" chapters for
> example:
>
> Alps America: 8 entries from 10 to 212 MB,
> Ampex: 4 entries, 5, 10, 15 , and 20 mb,
> Areal tech: 6 entries, 62 to 136mb (all IDE 2.5" notebook drives)
> ..
> BASF: 5 entires, 23, 15, 8, 10, 21mb (all MFM)
>
> etc...
>
> It's a bit PC centric.
>
> Major chapters:
> History of Disk Drives
> Interface Standards
> PRML tehcnology
> Enhanced IDE
> SCSI command reference
> What is SCSI-3?
> SCA Hot plugs
> PCI interface
> Choosing a Hard Drive and Controller
> Controller Setup and Jumpering
> Drive Setup and Jumpering
> Drive Cabling
> Low level Formatting
> DOS partitioning
> Macintosh Drive Installation
> Windows Drive Format
> Win95 Disk Format
> Novell Compsurf
> Hardware Compatibility Problems
> Common Installation Problems
> Troubleshooting
> Universal IDE parameters
> Hard Drive List
> Fine Tuning
> Hard Drive Parameters (by manufacturer)
> Controller Information (by manufacturer)
> Connector Pinouts
> Drive Jumpers
> CD-ROM
> Floppy Drives
> Optical Disk Drive Technology
> Optical Jukeboxes
> Optical Drive Specifications
> Tape Drives
> CSC benchmark tests
> Software
> System Notes
> Industry Phone List
> BBS Numbers
> Directory
> Glossary
> Index
>
>
>
> -Matt Pritchard
> Graphics Engine and Optimization Specialist
Whatever the coprocessor for the 386 SX was, does anyone have one?
I heard that (at one time) there was a software emulator for a
coprocessor...anyone ever heard of it?
Thanks
manney(a)nwohio.com
I recently picked up a Tandata td2500 at a London, UK car boot sale.
Does anybody know what it is? It is basically a keyboard with outputs on
the back for TV video, composite video, RGB (SCART), serial data, and a
lead to plug into a telephone outlet. The power supply is missing and plugs
into a 4 pin DIN plug - any info on voltages to use to power it up. The unit
was made by Tandata UK Ltd.
Also I like to hear what's available to buy - so here is a non-US version
of what I picked up at a large South London car boot sale on Saturday.
Epson PX-4 + cartridges (works) - 5 pounds (L) (1 pound = 1.6 $US)
2 x BBC model B (both work) - 1 L each
Casio pocket computer PB-410F (no battery) - 5 L
EG 2000 Colour Genie (works) - 3 L
NCR PC4i - nice all-in-one unit but turned out to be IBM XT clone - 5 L
old Sharp calculator - 1 L
Vincent Murray
Email v.murray(a)unsw.edu.au
> Seriously, it's a card that will allow you to connect to TwinAx devices /
> systems, like an IBM AS/400.
>
> With the right software and that card, you can use any IBM/Clone as a
> terminal to an AS/400, and some software will even allow you to use a local
> parallel printer as an AS/400 printer.
Hey, Guys, this is a classic computers list! Twinax terminals
connect to system/34, s/36, s/38 machines (dunno about S/32 or
earlier). I imagine they're only supported on AS/400 for
compatibility...
Philip.
