[vcf-midatlantic] Museum: PDP-8 and beyond. Come see it at VCF East

[Douglas Crawford]

THANKS SO MUCH Dave Gesswein for coming to the repair event and lending 
your PDP-8 expertise to us again for the weekend!
The progress you made this weekend is so exciting and encouraging.

For those fairly new to VCF MidAtlantic, our Straight-8 has local NJ 
history with the The Resistors (google it) and came to use in "barn 
storage" condition.  Dave massively restored this machine and continues 
to lovingly keep it going.  These fault discoveries and repairs are 
wonderful as we leverage this machine pretty hard as the machine is
the oldest computer that we can demonstrate at-will anytime in the 
museum. It's one of two that we can show how front panels work-
the other is the HP 1000 minicomputer.  Its the only one in octal.
(The UNIVAC 1219 is only demo'd at special events.)

We now have several demonstration options on the PDP-8:
- A "cylon" mode light demo
- Create a message on ASR 33 paper tape in readable font
- Math demo on the ASR 33 TTY
- Music played to a transistor radio via EMI.
- Loading a program from paper tape.
The programs, including the tape loader, are kept in core memory.
Great stuff!

We are now trying to decide to demo with the A/D board.

There are more plans for DEC restorations in the near term including a 
8e & PDP-11 restorations on the short term.  These are likely going to 
run even more impressive demos.
On the longer term we'll have much more DEC in the bigger museum space.

A year has been spent researching and putting in place thoughtfully 
selected and documented software demos on all the working 
microcomputers. This pushing us towards an all new museum experience
as we become a "must see" computing history location on the east
coast for the general public, STEM, technology college students,
and tech industry professional visitors.

-- 
Douglas Crawford
VCF Mid-Atlantic Museum Mgr
InfoAge Science & History Museums
2201 Marconi Road
Wall, NJ 07719