Posts by Martel The Scanner 5 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Feb 2011
I'm the guy who wrote the piece. Please note that The Register's editers and proff reeders decided for themselves where paragraph breaks, exclamation points and (parenthetical phrases) should and should not be. Their choices are not necessarily my choices, but I'm so flattered that they'd publish this thing that I dasn't pick nits.
There is a need here to clear the air. Several posters have taken exception to the posting of these pictures because they are available at www.rcsri.org, the website of the Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island. The implication is that The Register snagged, scarfed or otherwise somehow misappropriated these images from us. To the contrary, the RCS/RI has been working closely with Chris Mellor of The Register to make these images available to the wider world; to those folks who would not otherwise know of the RCS/RI. We are rather delighted to find out that we are already better known than we'd expected, and we hope that this article will make us even better known. The RCS/RI is an all-volunteer private organization, funded by its members (Although if you'd like to kick in a few bucks, let us know!), that collects, refurbishes and operates antique computers, generally but not exclusively associated with New England. We feel that the preservation of our technological heritage is well worth the pain and trouble that doing so requires. It's also a lot of fun. We have an Open House on the third Saturday of every month at our facility at the Atlantic Mill in Providence, RI, and we invite you to come visit our collection. And thereby to see for yourself what's in these pictures. Details may be found on our website, www.rcsri.org.
-Geoffrey G. Rochat, Member, Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island
There is a need here to clear the air. Several posters have taken exception to the posting of these pictures because they are available at www.rcsri.org, the website of the Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island. The implication is that The Register snagged, scarfed or otherwise somehow misappropriated these images from us. To the contrary, the RCS/RI has been working closely with Chris Mellor of The Register to make these images available to the wider world; to those folks who would not otherwise know of the RCS/RI. We are rather delighted to find out that we are already better known than we'd expected, and we hope that this article will make us even better known. The RCS/RI is an all-volunteer private organization, funded by its members (Although if you'd like to kick in a few bucks, let us know!), that collects, refurbishes and operates antique computers, generally but not exclusively associated with New England. We feel that the preservation of our technological heritage is well worth the pain and trouble that doing so requires. It's also a lot of fun. We have an Open House on the third Saturday of every month at our facility at the Atlantic Mill in Providence, RI, and we invite you to come visit our collection. And thereby to see for yourself what's in these pictures. Details may be found on our website, www.rcsri.org.
-Geoffrey G. Rochat, Member, Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island
I've not replied to any of the commenters because I've been having too much fun reading the comments. But *this* one! I had the pleasure of working along side Jack Burness in the early '90s. Jack was the creator of Lunar Lander on the GT40, still one of the best hacks in all of computerdom. One day, while rummaging through my trove of retro-computing documentation, I came upon an original green-bar source listings of Lunar Lander, with marginal notes written in Jack's handwriting. I presented the listing to him, and was very surprised when he reacted with horror.
I guess he'd had quite enough of Lunar Lander by then.
I, myself, am a Spacewar! fan. I've nothing against the PDP-1 version, except for speed, but in my mind the canonical version ran on a PDP-7 with a 340 graphics display. I might have gotten my bachelor's degree 2 years sooner had I never met Spacewar!
-G. Rochat
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