[GreenKeys] Bletchley Park...FORTRAN

[ldesoto at comcast.net]

Hi Bob, 



I left Tech and went to work for MaBell but in sonar projects.  I worked in SOSUS, finishing off with 4 years at Bell Labs Whippany.  I quit right  about the time Ma got screwed by the feds.  After that, I moved to Seattle for grad school at UW and never left. 



McMahon spent a lot of time with the 1620 as did Schoolfield and me.  Schoolfield spent so much time that he flunked out and the army got him.  I saw him a few times after the army but his new interests didn't do much for me.  I never did hear what finally happened to him.  I still talk to the McMahons every few years. 



The Sperry was a "solid state" machine in that everything was toroidal cores.  The clock was a track on the drum that was detected and sent to an amplifier to drive all the cores.  The final amp consisted of six 4CX250 power tetrodes in a push-pull configuration with three on each side of the transformer.  The final transformer had sheathes of copper strap coming off the secondary terminals for the logic section.  All this ran at 707 kHz.  I know the 250s were rated at 250 watts plate dissipation so if they didn't beat KRUS, they sure gave it a run for its money.  Wikipedia has an interesting article on it - especially the line printer.  



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_Solid_State 



I surfaced on this list because I came by a Model 15 and I was thinking about resurrecting it.  I would like to get a Model 19 or a 14 reperf just for fun.  In fact, I'm going to the local swapmeet this weekend to see if anything is available.  My brother-in-law sent me back the original TU and tuning indicator I built before I started at tech and I thought it would be fun to get all that junk clanking away again. 



Larry 






----- Original Message ----- 
From: WA5CAB at cs.com 
To: ldesoto at comcast.net, greenkeys at mailman.qth.net 
Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2009 10:30:08 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific 
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Bletchley Park...FORTRAN 

Larry, 

Where did you surface from?  I only spent a few nights with the 1620.  McMahon played with it a lot.  I was going into communications.  But ended up in the Oil Patch instead. 

I couldn't have told you it was a Sperry but it was Buz Root and it was a PDP 8.  But don't knock KRUS.  I was the station engineer during part of that period.  I'm sure we put out as much power as the system clock.  :-) 

In a message dated 3/4/2009 10:41:32 PM Central Standard Time, ldesoto at comcast.net writes: 


ROFL, 

Those were the days Bob, sleeping on the 60K core memory cabinet in the 1620 
room at Tech during a marathon between-the-quarters computing session.  Do 
you remember the Sperry "solid state" computer down in EE that Root, I 
think, was trying to interface to a PDP 8?  I shared an office with a fellow 
at Bell Labs who was supposed to have been a Sperry field engineer for that 
boat anchor.  IBM made it obsolete before it ever went out the door.  It 
still makes me laugh when I think about the system clock in it that 
generated more power in the broadcast band than the local AM radio station. 

:Larry DeSoto - WA5MLH 



Robert Downs - Houston 
wa5cab dot com (Web Store) 
MVPA 9480 

ROFL, 

Those were the days Bob, sleeping on the 60K core memory cabinet in the 1620 
room at Tech during a marathon between-the-quarters computing session.  Do 
you remember the Sperry "solid state" computer down in EE that Root, I 
think, was trying to interface to a PDP 8?  I shared an office with a fellow 
at Bell Labs who was supposed to have been a Sperry field engineer for that 
boat anchor.  IBM made it obsolete before it ever went out the door.  It 
still makes me laugh when I think about the system clock in it that 
generated more power in the broadcast band than the local AM radio station. 

:Larry DeSoto - WA5MLH 



Robert Downs - Houston 
wa5cab dot com (Web Store) 
MVPA 9480