LSSM

Happy DEC2020 day from the crew at LSSM!

A bit more about how our main exhibit floor is looking these days. Contact us for a visit! (masks required, etc) Today is Giving Tuesday, and we are in need of your help to continue our efforts. This crazy year has hit all of us in different ways, but small museums have been hit particularly hard, and many have closed their doors permanently. We're still here, and we're more stable than many museums, but we do need your help to keep going. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation. You can donate to us directly at https://paypal.me/lssmuseum, or via Give Big Pittsburgh at https://www.givebigpittsburgh.com//large-scale-systems-mus. Thank you!

HP-3000 Series 39 minicomputer I/O Map, showing the system finding its peripherals in preparation for a boot. Today is Giving Tuesday, and we are in need of your help to continue our efforts. This crazy year has hit all of us in different ways, but small museums have been hit particularly hard, and many have closed their doors permanently. We're still here, and we're more stable than many museums, but we do need your help to keep going. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation. You can donate to us directly at https://paypal.me/lssmuseum, or via Give Big Pittsburgh at https://www.givebigpittsburgh.com//large-scale-systems-mus. Thank you!

HP-3000 Series 39 minicomputer successful self-test. Today is Giving Tuesday, and we are in need of your help to continue our efforts. This crazy year has hit all of us in different ways, but small museums have been hit particularly hard, and many have closed their doors permanently. We're still here, and we're more stable than many museums, but we do need your help to keep going. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation. You can donate to us directly at https://paypal.me/lssmuseum, or via Give Big Pittsburgh at https://www.givebigpittsburgh.com//large-scale-systems-mus. Thank you!

Hi folks! It's been awhile; we've all been focused on surviving the COVID19 situation. We're fine here, and are cautiously forming plans for reopening. ANNOUNCEMENT: Our museum is now a 501(c)(3) registered federal nonprofit organization! Reaching this point was a lot more painful than it should've been, but we made it. We can now issue receipts for cash donations for use at tax time. Big thanks to Autumn Walker and Penn State Law for pushing that process and making it h...appen. And of course a post isn't complete without a great vintage computer photo...Pictured here is a new arrival, IBM model 129 keypunch station! We'll be getting it cleaned up soon. Thanks to Bob Hoffman and Matt Patoray for making that happen. Thanks, -Dave McGuire President/Curator, LSSM/MACT

Here's our newly-restored HP-3000 Series 39 minicomputer, with a 2645A terminal, 7978 9-track tape drive, and two 7914 hard drives. We'll share some quick videos of this system in a moment. Big thanks to HP-3000 specialist and friend-of-LSSM Mike Loewen for lending his expertise in getting this great system up and running again. Today is Giving Tuesday, and we are in need of your help to continue our efforts. This crazy year has hit all of us in different ways, but small m...useums have been hit particularly hard, and many have closed their doors permanently. We're still here, and we're more stable than many museums, but we do need your help to keep going. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation. You can donate to us directly at https://paypal.me/lssmuseum, or via Give Big Pittsburgh at https://www.givebigpittsburgh.com//large-scale-systems-mus. Thank you! See more

Here's a quick run of our beautiful IBM System/34, the successor to the System/32 we talked about earlier. Unlike the System/32, the newer System/34 isn't built into a desk, but is a single large rectangular chassis about five feet deep that weighs about 700 pounds. Here, it's shown with our newly-repaired IBM 5251 terminal, a real beauty! A razor-sharp display and a fantastic keyboard make the 5251 terminal a real pleasure to use. We are very happy to have been able to rest...ore it to its 1977 glory, for all of you (and us!) to appreciate. I hope more of you will be able to come visit us in person when it's safer to travel, as pictures really don't do this system justice. Today is Giving Tuesday, and we are in need of your help to continue our efforts. This crazy year has hit all of us in different ways, but small museums have been hit particularly hard, and many have closed their doors permanently. We're still here, and we're more stable than many museums, but we do need your help to keep going. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation. You can donate to us directly at https://paypal.me/lssmuseum, or via Give Big Pittsburgh at https://www.givebigpittsburgh.com//large-scale-systems-mus. Thank you! See more

Hi folks! Just a quick update from here. We are all ok, and the museum is secure, but we had a tornado blow through here (actually two in one night!) earlier this week. It caused some damage to some of our facilities, but repairs are underway. The photos in this post show some hideous yellow aluminum latticework (it was all the rage in the 1960s) on the front of the LSSM building's second floor, wrapping around the side. That stuff has needed to come down since we bought... the building, and we've had neither the budget nor the manpower to make that happen. But the tornado had other plans, and it broke several of the supports that anchor this crap to the building. Luckily, Steve and Jonathan Taylor, both engineers who are also those "masters of the physical universe" type of people, came to the rescue. Late this afternoon, the most precarious of the panels came down in a controlled manner, which certainly beats one of them beaning an unsuspecting passer-by on the head. Steve and Jon will be back next weekend to remove the rest of it. After some pressure-washing, which may be able to happen this summer (anyone up for helping with that?) I think the building underneath all of that yellow latticework will be quite pretty. So, big thanks to Steve and Jon! And while we're on the topic of thanks, our request for funding several weeks ago met with great success. Though we did have to spend a few of those dollars on tornado cleanup, we have enough cash on hand to keep our bills paid for the next couple of months. A big THANK YOU to all who contributed. This will be an ongoing issue, of course, so if you're inclined to help us out with funding again, or were unable to earlier but may be in a position to now, your further help in that department would be greatly appreciated. We cannot keep this going without your support. For some news coverage of the tornadoes, and some really scary photos of the aftermath, see: https://triblive.com//airport-hangars-destroyed-church-ro/ Thanks, -Dave McGuire President/Curator, LSSM/MACT

Hi folks! I'm getting ready to do a little work on our DEC PDP-11/44. As I just mentioned on our Instagram feed, while our museum is closed due to the COVID19 situation, I (Dave McGuire, president) live right down the street from the museum, and I will be coming over here several times a week to do restoration work and keep things maintained during our lockdown. I will try to post periodically to give you folks some nice pics to see, hopefully that will help alleviate the is...olation and boredom. The response to my request for funding help has been fantastic, thank you all very much for helping out. We are still in need of additional help in that area, so please help us if you can. It is the hope of the LSSM/MACT crew that we will be here and operational after this mess is over, to help things get back to normal. Stay safe everyone. -Dave McGuire President/Curator, LSSM/MACT

Here's a short video of the CE (Customer Engineer) control panel on our IBM System/32, showing the boot sequence. In IBM parlance, booting is called "IPL", for Initial Program Load. This handsome system puts on quite a nice light show as it runs. Today is Giving Tuesday, and we are in need of your help to continue our efforts. This crazy year has hit all of us in different ways, but small museums have been hit particularly hard, and many have closed their doors permanently. We're still here, and we're more stable than many museums, but we do need your help to keep going. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation. You can donate to us directly at https://paypal.me/lssmuseum, or via Give Big Pittsburgh at https://www.givebigpittsburgh.com//large-scale-systems-mus. Thank you!

Dear friends of LSSM/MACT, Due to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, we are suspending in-person visits to the museum, effective immediately, until May 31st. While our museum is free for visitors, much of our operating funds come from donations from in-person visitors, and the loss of that revenue stream puts us at significant risk. Even while shut down, we must pay our normal monthly expenses, such as utility bills, to maintain our security systems and minimal cli...mate control, for the safety of our exhibits. In the past, our donors have helped us drive to far-flung places to pick up vintage hardware, restore systems, and keep things going here. Now, we must ask for your help to cover these expenses. Up until now, I (Dave McGuire, founder) have personally absorbed any financial shortfall, but my work as a consulting engineer in embedded systems (under McGuire Scientific Services, LLC, http://www.mcguirescientificservices.com) has come to a sudden halt as my clients scale back operations. Honestly I don't know how I'm going to keep the power on at home, much less at the museum. Some of you may be in a better situation than me, and I'm asking you personally to help LSSM/MACT survive. The COVID-19 pandemic will deeply affect our society, but it is my hope that we can come out of it in one piece. Building and running our museum has taken years of hard work by our team, and we're looking forward to reopening to the public once this pandemic has run its course. We plan to do our part to help society return to some semblance of normalcy after this crisis has passed, but we can't do it without your help. You may donate via PayPal or check. Our PayPal address is [email protected]. Checks may be made out to Museum of Applied Computer Technology, and mailed to 924 4th Avenue, New Kensington, PA 15068. Thank you for your support, and for being a friend of LSSM/MACT. Thank you, Dave McGuire President/Curator, LSSM/MACT

Another successful work day this Saturday. A short summary of what happened. Reconfigured the PDP-11/70 to not use the extended instruction or math instruction options while doing troubleshooting. Take a Fujitsu Eagle drive out of storage, test it, repair its blower and service the air filter and install it in the PDP-11/70. Take the PDP-14/35 industrial controller from storage to the work area to start restoration.... Remove old air filters from PDP-11/70 and it’s racks, replace the filter material in the filter frames. See more

Another productive workday at the museum. A lot got done but the big thing was getting the DEC PDP-11/40 that was in storage, cleaned up, reassembled and to have signs of life. Some parts in the system had 1972 date codes, that makes this system almost 50 years old. It uses magnetic core memory and has a very cool diode-based "ROM" board with bootstrap code. We also got some first video on a 1976 DEC VT-52 terminal, and also got another DEC RK-05J removable hard drive refurbished and ready to be run through its paces in a system.

It's another work day here at LSSM. In this photo we're calibrating the position servo on a DEC RK05 drive. This is the part of the drive's mechanism and circuitry that allows it to know when the heads are centered over a track on the disk. Though we have many RK05 drives, this particular one is unit #1 on our DEC PDP-11/t55. Don't forget, today is the last day to take advantage of the discount on our Teespring shop.

We feel like sharing the love today. We have a coupon code for the teespring shop if you want to send some love our way as well. Use the code "LOVESICK" for 10% off and help support LSSM. Just click the "shop now" button and it will take you right to our shop. As always, we truly appreciate all of your support.

When restoring a machine, part of the restoration is the preservation of what all is found to be with the machine. In the case of our IBM 3774 Remote Job Entry station some very interesting things have been found tucked away in the hardware. Here are two examples, IBM service and engineering change documents on microfiche, and two data cassettes for the machine.... In the case of the fiche we have a Fiche viewer at the museum, but I went somewhere that has a Fiche scanner so I could make hard copies of the pages to use as a reference while working on the system. In the case of the data cassettes they are being digitized and preserved as 24 bit 96 KHz sample rate WAV files which are the current standard for audio archivists both academic and commercial. With the raw and working copies as well as the final audio all being exported as separate files. Who knows what other interesting stuff may be found in this system as we dig further into it. Matt

Be sure to check out our newest additions to our Teespring shop. There are some really fun ones we added today. This one just might be my favorite: https://teespring.com/lssm-vaxinated-tee. Which one is yours?

We have several new things coming this year. The first thing we're launching is our LSSM swag shop via Teespring featuring tee-shirts, coffee mugs, onsies for the little ones and more. You can access it by clicking on the "Shop Now" button. You can also just head over to http://www.teespring.com/stores/large-scale-systems-museum and as always, we thank you for all of your continued support.