A Trip Down Computer Memory Lane

News.com has an interesting stroll down memory lane with a look at the "DigiBarn", a collection of technology from early mechanical calculators to modern web appliances. NASA contractor Bruce Damer and partner Alan Lundell run this "museum in transition" from a 19th-century farmhouse deep in the Santa Cruz mountains. In addition to notable success milestones, the company also includes some of the industry failures, like an Apple III Damer acquired from Apple's legal department.

wooo

Could be called RAM Drive, but Computer Memory Lane is cool too

Handy link to TFA

Post links to second page; first page at http://news.com.com/A+trip+down+computer+memory+la ne/2100-1042_3-6203311.html [com.com] and almost-ad-free print version at http://news.com.com/2102-1042_3-6203311.html?tag=s t.util.print [com.com]

Go on. Read the article. You know you want to. You'll find out why the museum has to be packed up every winter, and learn that Apple had a portable music player as far back as 1979. And more!

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

I'm a little surprised that people haven't converted these old tapes to MP3s;

I think there are probably better ways of doing this. There are emulators that can read the audio data, and so it would be simpler to just store a digital copy of the data; I doubt MP3 could get the data down to anything like the size of the original, which is likely to be well under 64KB (it must be smaller than the amount of RAM the machine has, or it couldn't have been loaded. Even big programs that had to be loaded in segments weren't more than 100KB or so).

A few emulators can read from WAV files of the tapes. MP3 should be okay bandwidth-wise, but the psycho-acoustic model throws away information humans can't hear, and I don't know if that is a problem for some data encodings. The WAV-reading only exists to load files from old tapes, it's not a sensible long-term storage mechanism.

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

With a little knowledge of the tape hardware and the way it's used to store data, you can store the data on a tape much more efficiently than an MP3 does (and get faster encoding and decoding to boot). Your average 8-bit with a tape deck (for example, a ZX Spectrum) essentially has a 1-bit ADC and DAC hooked up to the tape deck. Data is (mostly) stored on tape as a long series of pulses of two different lengths (each representing a 0 or 1). Therefore, to create a nice and small tape image file (even of data in a custom copy protected format), simply detect and store a description of these pulses in e.g. TZX format [worldofspectrum.org]. Especially Spectrum emulation users often work with tape files like these.

Accuracy

Articles like this do more harm then good when they are filled with inaccuracies.

Not everything in the collection is Apple, though. There's also an original 1979 Osborne I--one of the first computers my father ever owned--the giant suitcase-size portable computer, and a Kaypro II, which helped kill the Osborne due to its smaller, sleeker design.

The Osborne I was introduced in 1981. The Kaypo II (there was no Kaypro I) was slightly larger then the Osborne, and weighed 6 pounds more.

This article is crap.

In case you didn't notice

The link goes to page 2 of the article.

I'd be interested to learn more about the "iPod prototype" - described as a Mac in a briefcase - how was the music stored on this? If it were on separate medium such as cassette, disk or somesuch then is it really a prototype of anything? Would it not be a similar, more cumbersome version of the Walkman, which had already appeared by 1980. Since it's a Mac I'd like to say the files were in AIFF format, 'cept WP says that was developed in 1988. What was the state of audio compression at the turn of the eighties? Uncompressed audio seems unrealistic on yesterday's storage media.

One slight error

The article says:

In fact, with the early Macs, you needed a "Mac Cracker," a funky metal device that looks something like a book stand, to open the machine.

I remember needing just a putty knife and a foot-long Torx wrench (the screws that held it together were seated at the top of the machine, but only accessible through deep holes in the bottom)....

I'm dissapointed to see...

...that this is a just another computer museum, rather than one dedicated to computer memory, I was getting excited by the thought of all those glass cases full of SIMMs, DIMMs and maybe even some magnetic core.

Why no link to the actual museum?

Is it that hard to put a link to the actual museum [digibarn.com] instead of to page 2 of an article that talks about said museum? Are the mods asleep today?

First post........to mention...

the article forgot Amiga....

OS Wars and Memory Lane.

Ah the irony, a computer museum filled with old M$ OS. Bill Gates once boasted that he would keep a copy of gnu/linux for his computer museum but would eliminate it otherwise. Yet nothing is more useless than an old copy of Windoze. They can be fun, but they are tied to a particular set of hardware and software that's all rotting away. Emulation is interesting but difficult thanks to all the built in traps. Still, it's nice someone is keeping these things around.

Roughly Drafted has a set of articles detailing the OS wars that would complement the physical collection. If you are looking for a trip down memory lane, here it is:

• 1980-1985: 8-bit Platforms [roughlydrafted.com]
• SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1980s [roughlydrafted.com]
• 1990-1995: The Race to Deliver The Next New Platform [roughlydrafted.com]

They are all well written, entertaining and accurate.

I come from that era

I remember when I got my 1st Radio Shack Model 1. I remember when I bought a Kaypro II. ( I still have it ). I remember how much I loved writing Z80 Assembler on CP/M.

I started out fooling around with these computers, sharing information on CP/M bulletin boards, learning how computers worked from the ground up.

I also remember having the opportunity to meet industry leaders like George Morrow, and work for Takioshi Shiina of SORD computer of Japan. I got to travel, and live in Japan working for SORD.

I remember COMDEX when there were competing operating systems and unique hardware before Microsoft got a strangle hold on innovation and creative thinking.

I remember a time where software patents were unheard of and the thought that ideas for software not the software itself could be owned by some one.

I think of how lucky I have been being able to work on projects where the ideas of creative people not the lawyers and accountants counted the most.

I have been lucky to have grown up in that time.

Thank you Mr Shiina

Cheers
 

Vic20..

"..the Commodore Vic-20, a 2K masterpiece.."

2K? 2k???!? Its 5K, sir, I will have you know!

http://www.viceteam.org/ [viceteam.org] (VICE VIC20 emulator..)

I was a packrat. Now I'm a technolgy archivist...

They should take some of the crap in my garage. My retirement investment. You never know when someone might want a Type 80 rectifier, CK722s, BC-348, RTL chips, JSR Model 15, 1401 core memory, bubble memory, 8080, etc... Not mention the magazines / books, LOTS of books. My wife loves it. Not...

Open PC BIOS.

The article states that the IBM PC was an open architecture. In fact it wasn't.

Whilst the OS, CPU, RAM, UARTs, DMAs etc could all be purchased from 3rd parties (Intel, Microsoft, Motorola and friends) they were not open in the OSS sense, the BIOS was proprietory. Compaq then Phoenix had to write clean room BIOS's to make a compatible machine. The same is true of the video BIOS.

Navigational aid

Back in the day, with the Scalectrix [wikipedia.org] that I had, I had a couple of circular "mechanical computers" that looked alarmingly like that navigational aid from TFA [com.com]. They were speed calculators, from what I remember, but they were simply a circular slide rule, of sorts.

Basic, but functional. Even if the power went off you could work out how fast the cars might go ;)

This 'computer museum' sucks

I really dont know why do article come out pointing to an half baked computer museum,check this one out , http://www.homecomputer.de/ [homecomputer.de] , and tell me wich one should be on the news ! Jorge Retro Review Magazine http://www.retroreview.com/ [retroreview.com]

Santa Clara computer museum

You see a lot of old hulks there- a fascinating excursion down memory lane. The museum is located in an old SGI building, slowly being engulfed by the Google Ameoba up the road.

Videos of the Digibarn

Here are some videos I took of the digibarn last fall. Unfortunatly, my camera malfunctioned when I tried to take more videos during Bruce's most recent tour.

1. http://youtube.com/watch?v=gYz8tsHbkYM [youtube.com]
2. http://youtube.com/watch?v=I6CN1rpPJQY [youtube.com]
3. http://youtube.com/watch?v=OUizzaTIJTk [youtube.com]

Oh, memory of computers!

Not computer's memories. I thought it was, like, a bunch of guys hanging around and nostalgically reminiscing about when a meg of RAM cost a thousand bucks.

--Rob