First computer with real-time clock?

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, Paul Koning wrote:

>  Vintage> The overall discussion is very useful, but in my particular
>  Vintage> case, it needs to pertain specifically to the IBM 650,
>  Vintage> because the assertion at hand is that a document used to
>  Vintage> discredit a certain scientist's claim to a certain
>  Vintage> achievement has a date stamp on it that is claimed was
>  Vintage> produce by the IBM 650 using its internal clock feature.
>  Vintage> The 650 does not have such a feature inherently, so now I'm
>  Vintage> trying to determine if there was ever an adjunct product
>  Vintage> that IBM produced to give the 650 the ability to tell time.
>
> It sure doesn't look like that from the docs on Al Kossow's website.
> It seems that the 650 doesn't have interrupts, which would make a
> simple periodic tick type system pretty problematic.

Yep.

> If the exercise is to attach the credibility of the document, it looks
> to me like you have enough data to do that.  You can clearly say
> "there isn't any such thing as an 'internal clock feature' on the
> 650".  That puts the ball in the other party's court, to try to
> demonstrate that there did exist some obscure add-on of which not a
> word appears in the dozen or so IBM docs that are on-line.

Exactly.  But I'm trying to be as thorough as possible in this research
since I may well end up acting as an expert witness in the upcoming trial.

> And even then, another question becomes whether the time stamp is real
> or a forgery, independent of what machine generated it.

Two separate forensic tests performed on the alleged document indicates
several problems with it.  My client is pursuing all angles because he
wants a slam dunk.  So I'm going to help him deliver it ;)

Thanks!

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

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