Responding: Thanks for the responses. In general, if someone sees some way THEY could do such an exhibit, based on their interests in hardware, software, and to represent some use or users - that's great! More than one person can do such things, as far as I'm concerned. I'll respond with what I'd do, what I had in mind, for my interests. - Herb ---------------- [Jim Scheef:] For this to interest more than just a few people the physical system that is modeled must be something familiar to most people...like Lunar Lander... Is that the type of thing you had in mind? That's not a bad question. No, Jim, I do NOT have in mind something that's "familiar to most people". It's helpful but not a goal. That's because, of 40+ years of personal computing history, "most people" by sheer numbers are familiar with personal computers used as ordinary devices on the ordinary Internet, social media, gaming, Twitter; or previously, to replace paper-tasks of job or business or hobby. Computers used to be extraordinary, and unfamiliar. Those people outnumber the scientists and engineers and other technical-trained people (and their fans) that I'm talking about. I described a very specific set of circumstances. But I'd not do such an exhibit, if there was zero interest. I'm seeing some interest today. Now - for say a continuing exhibit at the VCF Museum, you may well want something that's at least known-of - say, the half-century event of landing humans on the moon. And "lunar lander" programs are about as old as BASIC, if not FORTRAN. And, the landing problem IS a problem in physics; it's not hard to visualize. Of course it's been a game available on many platforms, so it's true history. And the physics and programming may be approachable to the unfamiliar (more on that shortly). also: Lunar Lander may be reasonable for an *analog* computer - I mentioned that hardware. A challenge would be the inputs and outputs, how to make them more than dials and graphs. For instance, the analog outputs could drive a modern visualization on a modern computer. I think this was discussed when analog computer restoration was discussed. -------------------- [John Heritage:] there's actually two pieces to the NASA competition. modify source code to improve performance....and an overall software / hardware solution...[discussion of modern hardware follows] A strong coder and a math guru are part of what's needed.. experienced computer architects, and people good at logic... Of course, I know little about the NASA competition, and little about modern parallel-computing hardware. But, as a digital BSEE engineer with some master's work in computer science, and as someone who hangs out at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab; I do have a clue about issues of numeric calculation of complex physical phenomena. I know there's some personal-computing hardware around that supports parallel computation. I humbly suggest you add "physicist" and "numeric computational experience" to your list of needed skills. The changes NASA wants, have to produce better results, not just faster ones. But further discussion here, would be outside "vintage computing". I'll end by saying, that limits of hardware and software were also challenges in the era of vintage computing. Something can be learned today, by reviewing solutions of the era. In fact, that's a principle thesis of my vintage computing activities. -------------------- [Tony Bogan:] Herb, I would love to see something like what you describe at VCF next year! I have zero background in fortran...the first thing I thought of was accelerators [for Apple II? Mac? computers]. someone else would need to do the coding.. If using my hardware is feasible, I would be very interested in helping any way I can. Tony, thanks for your encouragement. I have no shortage of vintage computing hardware, thank you. And Apple II's are not my area of primary interest in vintage computing. So I'd not use them in my own exhibit. And, I'd not likely use modern accelerators, those too are not a part of my interests. But there are people today, who ARE interested in those very things. So, you might consider such an exhibit yourself, and find an Apple II programmer who'd support that effort. Or of course, learn some coding and some physics - there were books on Apple II programming for physics and engineering! - and see where that goes. "Lunar lander" isn't the worst place to start. -------------- [Kelly Leavitt:] I have my senior project from [Rutgers?] (1993) . It was a simulation of random particulate transport in groundwater written in FORTRAN. I moved this chunk of FORTRAN IV from the mainframe/mini era to the PC....It ran on my Tandy 1000A with an 8087. The vector mathematics that FORTRAN could do was amazing. ...I had offered to port the FORTRAN code to C++ at the time. The professor just laughed... He had me port this to MS FORTRAN 77 and put a C++ front end on for graphing the results. Aha! Proof! Such things WERE done, even after the 1970's and 80's. And with personal computers. Thanks, Kelly! I'd say a Tandy 1000 with 8087 8088 is "vintage" enough. And the code was even older. Kelly, see if you can resurrect your work and show how it was done to these young'uns! A decent all-in-one machine from the era I'd consider using, is a Heath/Zenith Z-120 series system - 8088 plus an 8085, same MS-DOS (or CP/M), probably similar performance. I have FORTRAN for that, a Zenith/ Microsoft product. I use a Z-120 about once a week, and on many vintage projects. The Z-120's were also bought by the US military for their classrooms, and by many universities; some sold one to EVERY student. Many people over 50 remember them; that's helpful. I could probably add an 8087...768K of memory ought to be enough....vroom vroom!..he he Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net