What types of VCF exhibits do you like......Re: Advice on Xenix VCF exhibit
..one of several thread on VCF exhibit design. Dan Roganti ragooman said:
thought I'd alter the subject just in case the thread police is looking :)
Well, *I'm* looking. As I've said before: on-subject threads are in my interest, because I look for content from decades-old email discussions, and the subject-titles matter to me. Putting that aside... Dan talked about displaying uses of early microcomputers (and minicomputers) in labs and industrial settings. That rings true to me as well. 45 years ago, I was working in those settings, as a digital engineer. There are many other programmers and engineers of my age group, who visit VCF-E and who contribute to modern vintage computing. And, to the VCF's collection. So it's an important audience - see my recent post in a similar thread on Xenix exhibit discussion for what I mean by "audience". So I'm all for Dan's exhibits of minicomputer and early microcomputer use by scientists, engineers, and in industry. For that matter, early accounting machines and programs would be of the same order. Let's keep in mind: the first generation of microcomputer owner-developers, were often techies like these. Not all, but many. I think there's good news, and bad news, about such exhibits. Research papers and university theses from that era and older, are more available on the Web today than ever. University and govt. libraries have digitized their holdings and cataloged them. So a Web search will find them - whereas, years and decades ago, this was exceptional. So the content of such work, sometimes including coding, is available online. But numeric code doesn't exhibit well. Lots of these programs were essentially mathematical in nature. Numbers in, numbers out. Interpreting them was done by humans; there wasn't enough CPU power to waste with graphs and charts, that came later. So did graphic displays, for the most part. This stuff in the original, will be hard to exhibit. Also: the science content will be hard to represent, to most people including the younger crowd (under 30) and to the non-science non-math crowd. But I would not mind seeing, some hard-science stuff at VCF-East. And I think there's an audience for it, to warrant an exhibit or two. And consider this - demonstrating an ANALOG computer is an exercise in pure math, differential equations to be exact. VCF Inc. intends to restore such computers in the near future. So this is "in the cards". But, while it's good to say "here's some atomic reaction codes", explaining the physics or math would be very challenging and take up the viewer's time. That suggests to me the use of a Web page, not an exhibit. And so the practical question becomes this: What do you do with a physical exhibit of period hardware about period users, but on display in the 21st century to people who can't interpret that use, much less the time available to them? One possible answer might be - thinking out loud - is that you use modern computing (or faster vintage computers) to show some of the results. You could do worse than use simple video display hardware, to represent your results, produce some graphics. Or audio output, that's a useful mode of presentation. This will call for some thinking and imagination, and planning. Now, later vintage computing - HP desktop computers and calculators - WERE able to produce graphical results. But are they pretty pictures - which I can make with an oscilloscope and some simple circuits - or are they pictures that have some meaning? Dan also suggests texts from the period, about use of digital technology and lab instruments, to conduct experiments and do real-time data reduction. That resonates with me, Dan: my LINCtape drive reminds me, that the design-purpose of the LINCs was to automate biological-science experiments and tests, to bring computing power to those sciences, *in the 1960's*. DEC borrowed a lot from the LINCs, into their early minicomputers. David Gesswein has brought in some PDP-8 lab-class systems at other VCF-East's. I've got some HP and Heathkit products along those lines, myself. Some of the Heath lab products were developed in Princeton if I recall, that's a local connection. But the challenge is this: either accept a narrow target audience, or to enhance the real-time experience so that mere mortals can appreciate it on exhibit. Herb Johnson my 25 cents'
<snip>
But the challenge is this: either accept a narrow target audience, or to
enhance the real-time experience so that mere mortals can appreciate it on exhibit.
Herb Johnson my 25 cents'
The best "kids" videos have something to entertain for all ages; when a family watches together the adult jokes just fly right over the kids' heads but the adults can bare to watch the story. They Might Be Giants "Here comes the ABC's" comes to mind as an example. Same concept applies to vintage computer computer exhibits...visual presentation, clear higher level message, a good photo opportunity, something "to do", invitation/mechanism for those who want to learn more. Most persons spend a few seconds at each exhibit, focus on the hardware, don't want to read much, most anyway. Personally I have often put the meat and potatoes content into the machine exhibited, people can sit at the machine and take a quiz, print something they can take home for further reading, video screen slideshow, etc. I keep the posters' text to a minimum, avoid posters with paragraphs and paragraphs of text. Yawn. Bill Degnan twitter: billdeg vintagecomputer.net
On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 10:30 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: [snip]
Research papers and university theses from that era and older, are more available on the Web today than ever. University and govt. libraries have digitized their holdings and cataloged them. So a Web search will find them - whereas, years and decades ago, this was exceptional. So the content of such work, sometimes including coding, is available online.
But numeric code doesn't exhibit well. Lots of these programs were essentially mathematical in nature. Numbers in, numbers out. Interpreting them was done by humans; there wasn't enough CPU power to waste with graphs and charts, that came later. So did graphic displays, for the most part. This stuff in the original, will be hard to exhibit. Also: the science content will be hard to represent, to most people including the younger crowd (under 30) and to the non-science non-math crowd.
But I would not mind seeing, some hard-science stuff at VCF-East. And I think there's an audience for it, to warrant an exhibit or two. And consider this - demonstrating an ANALOG computer is an exercise in pure math, differential equations to be exact. VCF Inc. intends to restore such computers in the near future. So this is "in the cards".
But, while it's good to say "here's some atomic reaction codes", explaining the physics or math would be very challenging and take up the viewer's time. That suggests to me the use of a Web page, not an exhibit. And so the practical question becomes this:
What do you do with a physical exhibit of period hardware about period users, but on display in the 21st century to people who can't interpret that use, much less the time available to them?
One possible answer might be - thinking out loud - is that you use modern computing (or faster vintage computers) to show some of the results. You could do worse than use simple video display hardware, to represent your results, produce some graphics. Or audio output, that's a useful mode of presentation. This will call for some thinking and imagination, and planning. Now, later vintage computing - HP desktop computers and calculators - WERE able to produce graphical results. But are they pretty pictures - which I can make with an oscilloscope and some simple circuits - or are they pictures that have some meaning?
Just wanted to expand on your comments, About somethings I would try to consider for an exhibit There's still the old-school method of providing a visual interactive exhibit. Something that demonstrates the operation using simple display with a diagram outlined with lights, switches, etc,etc. And interfaced to a micro to make it interactive which the visitor can operate I worked on some training material back then when we had the first appliance micros, And the instructors wanted something to demonstrate the operation of a CPU So I made a display which sat on the desk using a diagram of a CPU with Registers, ALU, Program Counter, Stack Pointer, etc, etc Using LEDs to show the contents of those areas, and even more LEDs to show the path they take for the instructions and data and how they moved inside the CPU. And all of this was interfaced and programmed via the micro [TRS80 Model I] Then the student would write a program on the micro and watch it operate on the display. Then there are some existing modern "tools" which can enhance your exhibit to help convey your subject on any science related exhibit. So maybe together with some original code running your computer exhibit which might only produce results in text, or some original electronic demonstration which might produce only numeric results, This tool can provide the visual component to illustrate what happens. I think having any form of interactive exhibit is worthwhile This tool is a very impressive high school level interactive physics simulator on all materials [ie:graphics] Even model the thermal energy in tandem during the simulation And this lets you merge electronics for control applications into the simulation Mind you this is a 21st century high school level, while it may not be considered college grade material, The simulator is still comparable to the physics used in many high end gaming platforms, Plus more since it's interactive -- but then only in 2D So while these days of marketing hype about the many possible simulations that can be done with Minecraft, there is actually something more extraordinary available. It's been around for about a decade, and it's ported for the top 3 desktop platforms Its called Powder Toy, http://powdertoy.co.uk/ Tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKfwYOg1yog Operate a Nuclear Power Plant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytRfY8jY_VA Electronics - Build a Microcomputer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4eHgnLFk9k Build an Atomic bomb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxoLfeZcKxw Dan
On 01/13/2017 10:12 AM, Dan Roganti via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Just wanted to expand on your comments, About somethings I would try to consider for an exhibit
There's still the old-school method of providing a visual interactive exhibit. Something that demonstrates the operation using simple display with a diagram outlined with lights, switches, etc,etc. And interfaced to a micro to make it interactive which the visitor can operate
These are *fantastic*. I think we need more of these. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
william degnan posted: He quoted my either-or statement, "either accept a narrow target audience, or to enhance the real-time experience so that mere mortals can appreciate it on exhibit." Then Bill described his approach to his exhibits, and noted ways to cross-appeal over generations. Bill's exhibits are very well designed and thoughtful as professional-class presentations of his concepts for the exhibit. Glad my comments caught his attention; and that he presented his process too. He makes the point that "the hardware" [operating with its software] is the "meat and potatoes" of the exhibit. As a digital engineer myself, that's my inclination too. These machines are self-demonstrating to a point, at least for the generation of people who saw these as revolutionary. And they were often sold that way - "here's what it can do for you". But for younger participants, computers that do stuff is normal - but some of that old stuff isn't so normal for them today. Word processing, gaming. Those are examples where the experience is judged by younger people, the platform by older people. There's other divisions of audience of course, I'm making a point. But as an old man myself, the younger audience is the least accessible to me. I'd not sum up my post as an either-or better-worse proposition for EVERY exhibitor. In the aggregate, the whole event will be exhibits of each or both kinds, and so all bases will hopefully be covered. Everyone can't do it all, nor should they. For instance, contrast to Bill's example: one exhibit not long ago, was of a 1960's military computer. It consisted of showing ALL the boards, organized and titled by function, on a horizontal display. And there was access to original manuals, themselves a representation of 1960's documentation. I liked it. Why? Because where and when, are you gonna see such a thing? And open for examination at the component level if you are a tech? And if not, it's visually impressive by size for function - all them boards, all that PAPER - for so little computing power, but with a critical mission. It was a show of industrial art, accessible at many levels - simply presented as-it-is. Brilliant in simplicity. Moral: The exhibit-event, is a place to bring actual hardware, exercise actual software. Youtube and Web sites can show pictures, videos, textual content at the viewer's convenience. Even some interaction through simulators and hookups (!) to real hardware. (Bill Degnan's Telnet to PDP-11's, etc.) But VCF-East is eyeballs on and hands-on. That's a critical difference, and Bill points that out, in less words than I. Herb "compound sentence" Johnson retrotechnology.com
somehow the thread was split in half into separate threads, not sure if the mailing list did this so I replied back to this one to keep us sane :) On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Dan Roganti suggests a physics demonstration tool like
might be connected to a vintage computing demostration, to provide "physics" results from vintage computations or vintage control. That sounds plausible to me.
It satisfies Dan's goals of presenting early computing means to generate mathematical solutions on critical problems of the day. And it satisfies visual presentation goals of making those cryptic numeric and physics code, accessible to people without that training.
For my techie interests, I'd be curious about how to make the two work together. A modern computing box or tablet, running this program with a Lua API – whatever that is - connected to some vintage box through likely-simple serial-hardware protocols? Can they live together? It's "the odd couple"! ;)
Herb
ohh, that's an idea I haven't looked into yet with this software. I merely offered this as a supplement to allow one to have a visual demonstration Something independent sitting alongside the actual computer hardware In addition, if i had a minicomputer, a plotter would be a useful peripheral to plot data But your idea would be even more interesting if available I haven't seen a method yet on this to allow one to input data from an external source But I like to look into this some more too, there might be some answers on their forum
participants (4)
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Dan Roganti -
Dave McGuire -
Herb Johnson -
william degnan