[vcf-midatlantic] Sperry Univac Core - Moving off topic... perhaps the last word on this.

Douglas Crawford touchetek at gmail.com
Mon Jul 12 20:53:28 UTC 2021



On 7/12/2021 12:22 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
>> Douglas Crawford Sat Jul 10 02:49:34 UTC 2021
>> So, right. Here's the whole post mortem on this.
> 
>> That's a recap of the entire successful conversation.
>> Links to the board pics, and the UNIVAC manuals
>> and such are in the conversation.
>> Hence, "I'm good".
>>
>> Thanks!
> 
> It seems polite to respond to your detailed response to my "where's the 
> core" message.
> 
> Your responses were informative, thank you. As you responded, your Web 
> pages on WordPress are for other purposes than for showing items for 
> further discussion or to solicit inquiries. Your response explains 
> itself and needs no elaborations on my part.
> 
Thanks Herb.  I feel I said one thing in haste and in retrospect I think
it comes across badly- that the AN-UYK-20 is not interest.
Not my complete thought. I was thinking not interesting enough -to me-.
Most (if not all) vintage computers are interesting to someone and
have aspects, which brought to light, probably would enlighten interest in
many.  Like many in the hobby I got spread way to thin for the amount of
time I could put into the many great pieces I acquired in the last 10 years
so I made a call to not go deep into the AN-UYK_20 lineage of military 
computers.
I would love to know more about our own Univac in the museum and can't even
do that.  I hope that my plans with the core board doesn't disappoint to 
many
too much.  I recently, as posted on here, got a few pieces of a MODCOMP
Classic, and since that is a real oddity from my point of view, I might find
time to go into emulation with the fine example of the front panel I now 
have.

> Otherwise: you posted in this list to get some info: you got some info 
> and assistance: job done. But at some point you literally posted "Any 
> recommendations on where else to look?" and that is what I responded to. 
> If I posted after your request was satisfied, that was simply a 
> circumstance. My post also explained itself and needs no elaboration.
> 
Thank you it was a reasonable suggestion, of course! You expanded on my
request "where to look" with "what else I can do to get answers".
No problem.  Duane's response remained on the "where to look" aspect which
when, for instance, he showed me the availability of the parts on a military
web site, I learned - DUH!- look for military computer parts at the military
suppliers!  They just don't come up on web searches so I didn't find them.

> You and I, simply put content on the Web in different ways for different 
> purposes.  I'll be thoughtful about your use, you suggested you'll be 
> thoughtful about my suggested use. Those are considerations outside the 
> immediate topic which you have already concluded.
> 
> Doug, you asked me if I liked your site, if I would read a few of your 
> pages on WordPress. Well, I did. They are good presentations about how 
> you've designed various microprocessor-based projects, small and large. 
> There's a general display of your vintage collection. These are all 
> well-crafted pages with visual and textual content. WordPress sites have 
> a commonality to them that makes them hard for me to compare to other 
> Web sites.
> 
> The "adventures in ROV" page, is a pretty detailed presentation of the 
> methodology of students and mentors to create a toy-class small ROV from 
> Arduino technology and various toy-class parts. I only say "toy" because 
> you've also done commercial class development work. As an engineer 
> myself, I'm informed by your presentations of design process.
> 
> Doug, you are welcome to wander around my Web domain 
> retrotechnology.com, for any information and considerations of use or 
> result you can glean from them.
> 
Oh so coy, Herb!  :-) Your site is world class and I have been there for
many of the subjects you concentrate on, and when you concentrate, you
research to the nth degree and that's why it serves as the reference for 
many
for CP/M, S-100, 1802, to name a few.

I think your site and Bill Deg get the kind of responses because the tone
of the sites are research and documentation of artifacts in a way that draws
out responses that contribute along those lines.  Which is great.

I put some of these pages up when I was job hunting and trying to show a 
certain
high level of "functioning".  It didn't really help that job effort, but
I'm glad I put them up just the same, because its easy to forget a lot 
of the
juicy details of what you had to overcome along the way.
It all adds up when you lay them out end to end that's cool to look back on.

You are correct the ROV was toy class.  At the end of the project, I applied
for an opening at hired at VideoRAY, a ROV company right in my own town, 
but nope. No deal.
The HR person hinted they could not afford me, and alas, no offer was given.
That was the last place I applied, and probably the last I will attempt.

Thanks for looking the pages over & the kind words.

> There's an open question from Doug, about whether Web search "finds" the 
> discussions here in this email list. I don't know, I search a lot and 
> don't recall "finds" from this list. But technical content in this 
> somewhat-private email list is limited. So I speculate there aren't 
> often enough keyboards to trigger a high-value "search hit". It's also 
> possible, that the hosting site "tells" search engines not to search the 
> email archives. Those are administrative matters I have no knowledge 
> about. But as Doug suggests: the email list is for specific purposes, if 
> it doesn't do other things there are other venues which do.
> 
Right. I suspect this mailman system doesn't get cataloged but I have 
not tried to prove that.
I've not seen web searches refer to these emails. But I have seen hits 
from the VCF Forum.
So its probably wisest to post questions there instead and leave this
site more to the machinations of the VCF club.
Agree?

> Thanks and regards,
> Herb Johnson
> 


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