Oldest machine

[Jules Richardson]

woodelf wrote:
> Jules Richardson wrote:
> 
>>
>> Ahh, that's earlier than our Marconi TAC then (1963 IIRC, although 
>> designed in the late 50's).
>>
>> Not sure what we have that's earlier and qualifies. The Elliott 803 is 
>> late 1950's (1958 I think) but has a core fault so doesn't count as 
>> working until someone finds the time to fix it! It's probably the 
>> earliest complete machine that we have though; prior to that we just 
>> have small bits of some of the earlier famous* machines.
>>
> That may be easyer to fix than modern core memory , since I belive 
> modern core uses IC drivers and IC sense amps no longer made.

Yep. We've actually got one (possibly two) spare core stacks for the machine 
too if there's something *really* toasted about the one in the machine (I 
can't remember the nature of the fault myself now). The guy who looks after it 
was a trained Elliott engineer, so I don't expect it'd be a complicated repair 
either - it's just time consuming and there are always a million other things 
to be done!

Would be nice to have it running again though. I only realised at the weekend 
that there's a massive lighting strip built into the back of the control desk 
- quite why you'd want to run it in an otherwise dark room I don't know!

cheers

J.