On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 11:00 +0100, James Taylor wrote:
The vintage computing exhibit rocks - they have mechanical punch card sorters, mainframes, reel readers and so on all the way through to games machines. I suspect before long the curators will turn it into a 'dont touch that - we want to keep it preserved for other people to play with'...
I think they may do that with some of the rarer exhibits...But the whole attitude seems to be quite relaxed when it comes to the home computers. They even had a card punch with a stack of cards you could practise punching.
Colossus of course is heavily guarded (usually by Tony himself) mostly I suspect because with exposed anodes running at 400V it would probably kill someone if they touched it.
I must say my highlight was the reconstructed bombes (which where polish in origin), and I beleive that they work but they don't have them turned on. They also have them in the 'hut' which is quite neat.
Yes I gather that they have some that are fully operational although I didn't see any actually working.
When I was there I don't think there was much in the way of food prevision (ie it was a bring a packed lunch) but certainly worth while.
There is a pretty basic cafe there now..Mostly pre-packed sandwiches and jacket potatoes...Food was quickly forgotten when I saw the rows of unguarded home computers from my childhood next door :-)