Computer History Museum 3777
I agree. I found out (after I was finished with their clbuttes) that the best teachers in my middle school...
What I am saying is that the physical, external appearance of the computer was a pretty small part in the user, programmer or sysadm expereience of a Tops20 system. This interaction centered on terminal, and later network, access from a terminal; and later a PC-type device.
Even the console was usually a LA32 or somesuch printer in an office a few rooms away from the physical computer.
I worked closely with a Tops20 system 1979-1984, and I only physically laid hands on the machine around 5 times. I used a tape drive (TU45) around 50 times. The computer, AC unit, PDU and disks were visible behind glbutt windows.
Then there are the LOTS users from Stanford. The Low Overhead Timesharing System had 3.5 FTE: The half-time Director, and the full-time...
The type of installation was fairly typical of timesharing systems 1975-1995. I experienced Tandem, IBM, Prime, VAX-VMS, VAX-Unix, Sun and SGI systems used in this fashion.
So, a "what it was like" display does not really require firing up the real hardware. A $200 emulated system (a 400 Mhz PII with KLH is pretty close to the real speed of a KL10) would be adequate to service the actual terminals. It will fit in the vacant space just next to the PDP11 front end.
At that point it wasn't clear that the facility would ever be needed. In a depressed economy and during mbuttive layoffs stockholders take a dim view of huge investments with no guarantee of...
Today, Google's actual hardware forms a pretty small part of the "Google experience". The closest impact from the actual hardware the average user will have are probably the consequences of the CO2 emissions required to power it.
Such a display may be a little to cerebral for the average museum visitor, so perhaps a few games may me needed to catch the interest.
-- mrr
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