A Wandering through the Vintage Computer Faire
The Vintage Computer Faire was held last weekend at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View last weekend. Sellam Ismail, VCF Coordinator and vintage computer collector, was kind enough to send me a couple of passes. Unlike the cozy NASA-Ames location of several years ago, the Vintage Computer Faire, typically home of games, small computers like the Amiga, and the like, has begun to nicely complement the "Big Brothers" collection of DEC, IBM, and other gargantuans in the museum's permanent collection. What better place to talk about the good old days but in a place surrounded by a VCF buff's beloved machines.
Last year we did a presentation at VCF 2003 entitled Before 386BSD: The Symmetric 375 & Berkeley Unix (see the mention in Talk About Legacy Machines). Symmetric Computer Systems, a venture-funded company founded in 1982 by William Jolitz, was a contender in the hot race to produce a personal BSD Unix system. The Symmetric 375 was the first system out the door with hardware floating point and virtual memory, beating Sun by years. It was the first system with open source supplied, integrated, and tested, from EMACS to SPICE for use in scientific and engineering work. And it was the first to ship systems with all software fully installed and tested, ready for use immediately. William and Lynne Jolitz discussed the design and development of the 375 computer and its influence on 386BSD - the first open source BSD system for the X86 released a decade later. That was a fun talk!
The year before that, when the VCF was still at NASA-Ames, we put together a poster entitled Symmetric Computer Systems - The Story of a Systems Startup. And that was a lot of fun, let me tell you. Ever try to get an all-wirewrap handcrafted system running? We did...
We displayed the operational all-wirewrap (20,000 connections, 25x22 inch bd) Proto I computer (in the case) from 1983. I also had the original notebooks for Proto, including the wiring key. Proto I had an Atassi 40 MB drive with the 1984 BSD OS running a 16032 chipset - I took off the cover so that everyone could see it. I demonstrated that it worked by playing rogue. Rebecca Jolitz got every parent-child quiz question correct, by the way, and mille bourne still works perfectly. Games were used to check system operation, so they were part of the original Proto system.
The photo display included a picture of William with the barely populated wirewrap board, along with the original bizplan cover, funded prospectus, lots of photos of the founders, team and investors, PAD master for the 375 board final rev. I kept the picture big, by the way, so you can see the details.
One of the amusing items is the funding came in, and then $45k immediately went out for a System V license (I attacked the invoices and check stubs). The tape came, and was thrown in the trash. Then a $750 check was sent to the Regents of the University of California, so we could use BSD. It didn't have anything really to do with System V, but you had to "pay to play" then, so you really had to have a funded company. We also paid $10k for a GENIX license for the port by the team William led at National Semi prior (Project Mesa) to bootstrap the system faster on the 16032. SCS got a significant percentage of available venture funding for the effort. Built the boards. Used the WD ST-506 controller card - basis of IDE follow-on. Totally portable.
Also had a final production unit - ran fine, showed a 4.3BSD SYMMETRIX system. Had a Miniscribe (remember them?) 85MB drive. 8MB board (1Mbit DRAMS). SCSI tape. Were first in virtual memory, portability, single board microprocessor-based system. Board internal very tightly designed - piggybacked connector enet card on back. That's how we got it small enough to be portable. The heaviest thing was the disk drive/controller bd unit.
The kids helped themselves to the next door Amiga display - looking at them now, Amiga still impresses me for their graphics (look at them) and game playing ability. They played these games the *entire* time. The Amiga guy ended up with lots of traffic (we were next door) because the kids were so enthusiastic people would just come over and watch. Just what gaming should be about.
You know, I've got PC's barely lasting a few years, and Windows software delivering bogus errors due to intentional bit rot so you upgrade. I've got an 20 year old wirewrap and a 17 year old production unit, and they still run great! And BSD Unix looks just the same - same commands, same code, same everything, as current systems (although the X-Windows stuff came a bit later). However, rogue was better then, before they changed "floating Eyes" to "Emus" (come on - who goes and kills emus in dungeons?).