Visiting Intel, Computer History Museum, Apple Co., Fry's, Weird Stuff store, Bob Rosenblooms computer collection - big day

This has been a great day here in Silicon Valley with visits to "The Computer History Museum", Intel Museum, Weird Stuff and Fry's computer stores and Bob Rosenbloom's computer collection. This is the kind of day historical computer collectors dream of - my wife and I were sure having a good time with Lyle Bickley touring us around the area. Ended the day with fresh fish meal at the "Fish Market" restaurant in Mountain View, CA.


        David tells in his own words about the visit to great things in Silicon Valley.

 Lyle Bickley, PDP8S, Bob Rosenbloom & David Larsen at Bob's computer collection.

 David & Gaynell Larsen at Intel Corporate Office and Museum







One display in Intel Museum.

Fly's Giant computer store - really big - 50 check out registers.

 Weird Stuff Warehouse - Wonderful old computer things for sale.

 Computer History Museum

 Dave , Bob and Lyle at the PDP1 computer. The only PDP1 that is operational in the world.  Lyle was one of the folks that helped restore this rare computer - 3 only.  David & Gaynell enjoyed a game of "Spacewar!" running on the PDP1.
Here is one of my video's about the PDP1 'CLICK'
One more video - the Bill Gates story with the PDP1 'CLICK'




^{By David Larsen" KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Vintage Computer - A look at new home for the Bugbook Computer Museum's PDP8S minicomputer

info click

My wife and I arrived in California just fine and the first afternoon 10/23/13 had a really nice visit with Lyle Beckley . We had a wonderful Italian dinner at the end of the day. Great first day's visit. Today we will be meeting up with Bob Rosenbloom and will tour the Computer History Museum here in Mountain View. Gaynell and I are looking forward to seeing it again. Lyle will give us a guided of the museum. He has some of his computer collection at his home including the PDP8S from the "Bugbook Historical Computer Museum". Lyle  is working to bring it back to life as a functional computer. He has it starting to function but not really executing programs --

Good news - Lyle called me 11/08/13 and he now has his PDP8S fully functional.  Follow up email indicated continued work - replacing a few burned out panel lamps. Great work Lyle sure good to know the 50 year old system is now executing programs. 

Lyle Bickley & David Larsen

Some of Lyle's other Computers

PDP8S from our collection

Lyle running Spacewar! on his PDP8 E

Up date on PDP8S 7-18-14
Hi Dave,

I was chatting with Michael from the RICM and was about to ask him to
watch the video on your website of you finding and opening the box
containing the PDP-8/S you sold me. But I couldn't find it on your
website. - (Here is the link to video- Dave)

BTW: Since we last chatted my PDP-8/S has been up and running most of
the time. A couple of weeks ago, another transistor went out - and
memory began to fail. I found and replaced it - and now it's working
100% again. So far I've replaced a total of about 32 transistors and
over a dozen diodes.

I recently went through CPU and memory timings in great detail - and
now they meet all of DEC's specifications.

My 8/S passes all DEC diagnostics - and runs FOCAL w/o a hitch.

Bob build a cool I/O interface for the 8/S (and made one for me, too)
that emulates a TTY, high speed paper tape (partial), A->D, D->A and
incremental plotter. He does the hardware and I'm in the process of
modifying the drivers in FOCAL to support all of the above ;)

I hope all is well with you and Gaynell!

Cheers,
Lyle

David Larsen

^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Computer History Museum - A planned visit to California to see Computer Collectors Bob Rosenbloom & Lyle Bickley + Museum

Computer History Museum

Bugbooks

My wife and I are planning a visit to California this month the 23rd of October to see our new friends and the Computer History Museum in Mt. View California.  We visited  the museum about 6 years ago however  I understand many changes

and wonderful improvements have been made since our last visit. We are really excited to be making this trip for many reasons.  Several of the minicomputers from our "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum" have gone Bob Rosenbloom & Lyle Bickley & they are associated with the Museum. Lyle is one of the founding members of the Computer History Museum. He volunteered  to give Gaynell and I a personal tour of the museum.  Bob does volunteer restoration work there and will join us. You can see the computers from our collection that Lyle now has here 'CLICK' and Bob's are here "CLICK".
 

Bob Rosenbloom

Lyle Bickley

                          






                                         
It is always a pleasure for me to visit the area where my professional electronics career started in 1963. -WOW that was 50 years ago- I did engineering work for Raytheon, Varian , and Fairchild Semiconductor in the San Francisco Bay Area before my 31 years of teaching at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.  My son was born in Palo Alto (1963)  near the present Silicon Valley.  The Silicon Valley was just  beginning when I was there -- it was mostly orchards of Prune Trees.

David Larsen

I will be taking lots of pictures during our visit and making video's for the blog. I will posting on my at www.twitter.com/computerhobby and here on my computer blog.

  ^{"By David Larsen" KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Vintage Computer Intel MCB8-10 Microcomputer 1972

The Intel MCB8-10 is one of the first microcomputers using the 8008 microprocessor. I am sure there are earlier ones but this seems to be about the first one from Intel. I acquired this microcomputer in 1981 from my friend Robert (Bob) Stone. Bob was on the lookout for memorabilia to add to our historical microcomputer collection. I had known Bob for at least 10 years while he worked at Virginia Tech. He was also pursuing a degree while working.  In 1981 when he purchased this computer he had received his PhD and moved to the Sunnyvale area of California. There were many great shops in the Bay area for computer and electronic hobbyist in those days. The shops were packed with the early microcomputer surplus things from the local Silicon Valley   start up companies.  Remember the microcomputer revolution was only 10 years old starting in 1971 more or less with the first commercial microprocessor chip 4004.  The Apple 1 microcomputer only arrived on the computer genera in 1976.  The Bay area electronic junk shops were full of items any collector today would have absolute euphoria over and think they had died and gone to collector heaven.

Bob was able to purchase this MCB8-10 for me at the Halted Specialties Co., Inc in Sunnyvale CA. for $125.00.  That was a tidy price for those days but this was a rare computer even at that time.  The name Halted Specialties makes me think "Stuff no longer made or sold". 

The microcomputer MCB8-10 First Intel 8 Bit Development  System. This uses the 8008 microprocessor and was used to develop hardware, software and program 1702 EPROM'S for final product design . I do not find much information about this system on the internet. A few other collectors do have them in there collections. I  have several manuals for the system so it is a well documented system. I was able to add the MCS8-10 to my collection in 1981 and it is in very good condition. This is not the first Intel development system however it may be the first 8 bit development system.

 

 Part of control panel with switch register                                 CPU card with memory

This is Nate Cleveland , he works after school with the microcomputer collection doing data entry and web updates.  Nate ( High School student and part time staff ) is holding the 8008 system manual for the computer.  Our LCF Group employs 2 addition part time student office assistants - they are now in college however they started while in High School. These student assistants are a tremendous help with our museum collection and display. The photo at the top of my blog was designed by Student Intern Amber Ingram using the panel from the MCB8-10.

   

This video was made 3 years ago and I do think

my editing has improved.  The Intel MCB8-10

Microcomputer
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Photo of Dave in museum display with MCB8-10 and Apple 1. (CLICK)

 

Dr. Robert T. Stone (acquired  Intel Development System in this blog for our collection)  worked with us in the old days of the "Blackburg Group" about 1980. He coauthored this book "Design of VMOS Circuits" with Howard Berlin.  Robert and Howard were authors in our "Blacksburg Continuing Education Series" and wrote several excellent books. 

Appreciate a like on Museum Facebook Page.

 This is one more hat I ware in addition to 'Computer Collector/Historian' .  Bernie Coveney on the left with CD master & me David Larsen with our contract- We commissioned Bernie to write, compose and record a theme song for our "Chantilly Festival Farm" . Bernie produced  great Bluegrass theme music and we will be using it on all our  Chantilly Farm promotional media. I  will also use it as branding for my video's in the future. I already started with my last video "Vintage SCELBI Computer". I will use it here on the blog when I can learn how to add music. "by David Larsen" - Computer Collector/Historian