On and Off-Line

[DavePEI]

Don't forget I came from the days of the DEC PDP8, and in my early working life actually had the opportunity of working INSIDE a Univac - now there was a machine which needed cooling - aisles surrounded by vacuum tubes.

Your mention of the Univac jogged a memory I have of Dad describing the computer at the USAF base in Duluth, MN.  This would have been forty years ago, and I'm sure the technology was at least twenty years old at that time.  From his description, the building was three stories high, had the floor dimesions roughly the same size as a regulation basketball court, and was the only structure on base that was air conditioned.  I recall him saying that four huge AC units were installed, and I'm sure half of those were redundant and were only there for added reliability.  The most powerful part of his description was what would happen if all the air conditioners suddenly went offline-- the entire contents of that building would burn up in less than four minutes.  I'm sure this description was standard base safety instruction, but it still impressed me.

Believe it or now, early Univacs and their predecessors needed every bit of cooling they had.  When you were servicing a Univac, most of the work was INSIDE the computer. Picture aisles you had to walk in in order to change the vacuum tubes which lines those aisles. There were some 5.400 tubes in that machine. That early Ferranti was installed at the University of Toronto. Believe me, it was hot as Hades if you had to go in to replace tubes.

I only had to do this for a couple of days, but I will always remember it! This machine was soon replaced by an IBM 650, also a vacuum tube machine.

Dave

[DavePEI]

A pretty productive afternoon. I now have Windows 7 Ultimate loaded on the machine, plus a number of pieces of software I will want. I have the Windows XP virtual machine installed on it as well, but haven't tried it out yet. It is now downloading and installing several hundred Windows updates .

It is nice booting Windows and seeing it showing 8 gig of RAM. The machine is lightening fast!

You will note the front panel held on with elastics. The pins which hold it to the main chassis were broken during shipping, and I am awaiting a replacement. Wires will be tidied up when I have the new front panel installed, as there are many wires coming from that panel, and I don't want to do it twice.

Photo of the machine as Windows 7 Ult. is being installed...

Dave

[DavePEI]

Hi All:

Whew! I have the new machine fully loaded now, and it is performing like a champ. All my telephone information has been moved over, all my bookmarks and Firefox profiles (including passwords) have been moved over, all my old emails, my FTP settings for working on the site, my genealogy data, and just about all the programs I had on the old machine.

So, it the old one were to die today, all would be ok. But it is still hanging on, and I hope it will for another couple of weeks until I am certain nothing was missed.

One great disappointment, is that my Adobe Acrobat Pro won't run on the new machine - my old install disk has gone bad. I use that to Scan and produce PDF files, but I can't justify spending another $2-300 to buy a newer version. I am thinking about buying Nuance's Paperport which costs a lot less, but has most of the same functions in its place.  

So, I am mostly done, with the loss of almost no data - always a fear when you update machines, especially when you need to change to newer operating systems.

I am still waiting for the replacement case so I can replace the broken front panel which came with this case. Thankfully, when it comes, I need only to remove the broken one and replace it with the one off the new case - the back steel portion on this one is file - a minor nuisance.

What a beautiful machine. Now back to normal!

Dave

[DavePEI]

We finished the last of the new computer today - installing the replacement front panel for the machine which arrived yesterday morning much to our surprise. UPS actually delivered on a Saturday! Finally was able to close it up once and for all!

So, it is all closed up and working beautifully.

A new scanner was purchased to replace my old scanner I use on the other machine. No windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit drivers were available for it, so I couldn't use it on the new machine.

I purchased a CanonScan LiDE700e, which does have redesigned drivers and it works great. An 8x10 full colour photo takes only ten seconds to scan, and it also has a 35 mm film scanner, Things I like about it are the one touch PDF option - press a button on the scanner, and it will quickly scan a page, ask if you want to scan another, and then continue. Once you tell it there are no other pages to scan, it produces the full PDF. Great for scanning telephone documents without saving photos or using an external PDF program.

The scanner also has a one button copy button - it will scan a page, and shoot it to my non-Canon printer and print it, once again, without intervention.

No need for a dangling power supply - the led scanner is driven from a simple USB port and power is provided by the computer.

As I use a network printer (Brother HL2270DW), connections to the network are via the home network, and it can be accessed by all our computers, even the machine over in the museum. Love the way the scanner automatically prints to it when copying!

So, now all that is done, and all my software and  data is moved over and operating, I can get back to enjoying my phones.

So far, the old machine is also still working, though I doubt for much longer considering the temperature the motherboard is running on it. However, the longer it runs, the better it is, in case I forgot to move anything over to the new machine!

Dave