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2000 RCS/RI
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Thanks to Mr. John Chapman and the University of Rochester (New York) Medical School, RCS/RI now have an extensive selection of spare boards and components for their Packard Bell 250 minicomputer. The spares will go a long way to assist the effort to have the machine operational by its 40th "birthday" in April, 2001.
RCS/RI are pleased to announce that the tape containing the executable version of PDP-12 "SPACEWAR!" (on loan from Mr. McKenney) has been successfully copied and brought into execution. RCS/RI plan on duplicating the remaining tapes, some of which contain other interesting games, in the loan over the next few weeks.
Images of the screen and some of the operations are now available at http://starfish.osfn.org/rcs/oct21/. (Please note that these are raw digital- camera shots and are of limited quality.)
Interestingly, the version on the tapes is not a direct "port" of the classic PDP-1 version, but rather a modification of that code. RCS/RI have two versions of the game; in one, ships "warp" from one side of the screen to the other when they fly "off" the playing field, and in the other they "bounce" from the playfield borders.
RCS/RI anticipate fabricating controllers for the game so players do not have to use the front- panel switches; this will allow much greater interaction with the game by visitors.
Mr. Paul McKenney has been nice enough to loan us an executable copy of the classic computer game "SPACEWAR!" on LINCtape for our PDP-12. We will make a copy of this item and make it available for play on our operational -12.
RCS/RI has applied for, and received, a MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) Organization Code from the Library of Congress for the RCS Library.
MARC code: RPRCS Organization: Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island (Providence, RI)
These codes are used to represent names of libraries and other kinds of organizations that need to be identified in the bibliographic environment. The codes are for exchanging information in machine-readable form.
RCS/RI received a donation of an IBM RS/6000 POWERstation 730 from AS220. The POWERstation 730 is very similar to the POWERserver 930 in our collection, but with a high resolution graphics system. It runs IBM's AIX operating system, and the Motif based AIXwindows.
RCS/RI has a documentation library and computer media archive at our Providence facility. We have made extensive progress on a project to organize the library. We installed four 9' tall shelves and have sorted a large percentage of the collection. We are planning to create a machine-readable catalog of the entire library. On another note - the latest addition to the library is a Sun SBus Developer's Kit.
RCS/RI received a donation of a Prime 2850 with associated manuals. The system includes internal SCSI disks and 8mm tape drive. There is also a Cipher drive, and fanouts for 96 terminal connections.
RCS/RI received an IBM 7361 Fastdraft Work Station. The system is in a 5' tall cabinet, and features an internal disk and 8" floppy drive. The donation includes complete documentation and diagnostic disks. It can connect to a console terminal, a plotter and two vector graphics displays w/ light pens. The system was used to teach CAD at a technical college.
Mr. Dave Fischer, one of the Directors of RCS/RI, is the featured artist at AS220 in downtown Providence. The show opens today, June 15th, and closes on July 1. Hours are from 5:00PM to 9:00PM.
Details, photographs, and a link to AS220 may be found at The Centre for Computational Aesthetics.
RCS/RI have received a donation of an IBM RS/6000 model 220 workstation.
RCS/RI and RICM are pleased to announce that they have received a large donation of IBM technical documentation and spares, some of which date back to the 1400 and /360 series era.
A graduate student of film at the Rhode Island School of Design has released a documentary called Disinformation about a group of "hackers" known as the Cult of the Dead Cow. The intro of the documentary contains images of terminals, monitors and computer chips from the RCS collection. An article about the filmmaker appeared in the Providence Journal.
RCS/RI are pleased to announce that they have found a victim, er, "volunteer", to take care of the Website and keep it maintained. RCS/RI anticipate that the Website will be vastly expanded this year and will include a catalogue of RCS/RI's collection along with other useful bits.
The Webmaster is actively soliciting feedback and suggestions for making the Website more useful to the public. He may be contacted at rcs@osfn.org.