[rescue] Interesting bit on Multics

[Earl D. Baugh Jr.]

On Fri, 2003-10-17 at 22:41, Dave McGuire wrote:
 >    I *cried* (literally) when the goons at Purdue destroyed that CDC
 > 6600.  As far as I've been able to tell, it was the last one.

There was actually a CDC 3400 (yes, 3400) used in production by RCA over in 
the Bahamas til late 1984...and as a backup probably til 1985.   While I 
didn't actually see it being done, the plan was for it to become part of an 
artificial reef off the coast of Andros Island (since it wasn't worth the 
cost of shipping to return it to the states...even though it's very close 
to West Palm).  Had I been "rescuing" at the time I might of actually tried 
to save it...it had a lot of interesting features.....48bit word...etc.  I 
actually did some programming on it as part of the conversion to a Gould 
box.

Working on the CDC was the first (and only) time I've written code on a box 
that was physically OLDER than I.   The most off beat problem/issue we had 
with it was when we found a "bit" that would randomly toggle on a board, 
and since we had "service" on it, we call CDC. They didn't believe us that 
we had one still in operation, til they looked at the service 
contract.  When we asked for the replacement part, they really scratched 
their heads...  (though they HAD to get us one, as per the 
contract.....)  They called us back a couple of days later, when they had 
found a replacement board, though we had to ship the broken board to them 
to see if they could fix it...cause the source of the replacement board 
wanted one back (or we had to return the board when we retired the 
box).......the source was....

the Boston Computer Museum......

yup pulled a board from a MUSEUM to keep it working....

No Urban legend here....I was there.

Earl