• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

DEC-20 Day!

Now that you've started the reveal, would you be willing to share more info about the Lotus (?) in your avatar?
Sure! Now that we have completely veered off off-topic, anything further should probably happen in Off Topic (just PM me if you want my attention over there, I don't follow it regularly).

It is a 2006 Brammo Ariel Atom 2:

6F5S9025-s.jpg


6F5S9029-s.jpg


More on my blog at: http://www.atomacrossamerica.org.

Atoms in formation on the Golden Gate Bridge: YouTube rollbar cam YouTube nose cam

There's an amusing backstory to those videos. One of my friends with an Atom posted that he'd reserved Laguna Seca for a 3-day weekend, and did anyone want to come out and have fun. There's a large group of Atom owners within sane driving / trailering distance. For me, it is a 3000-mile drive (each way) and I said sure, I'd be up for that. That's one of the reasons my blog is called An Atom Across America - most of the 36,000+ miles I put on the car were driving cross-country many times between 2006-2011.

Most of the time, it was a lot of fun. Sometimes, not so much. Riddle: Why do they call them buclet seats? Answer: Because they fill with water when it rains!
 
I have to set my calendar to remind me of DEC 20 every year! That was the machine I fell in love with computers on. Walked into a room with the 20 behind glass, at the local community college. The student room had I'd guess 20 or so VT-100's.

It was across the hall from the IBM 360 room. I always felt superior :)
 
My absolute favorite DEC machine was the pdp-10 at Penn State. It was #46 of the KA-10 line and had a wonderful front panel. Next favorite is of course the 8i which I learned computers on back in the early 70s.
 
My absolute favorite DEC machine was the pdp-10 at Penn State. It was #46 of the KA-10 line and had a wonderful front panel. Next favorite is of course the 8i which I learned computers on back in the early 70s.

The RICM has two KA10 front panels. Some day we will connect one to a Pi running Simh so it will blink the light bulbs.
 
My absolute favorite DEC machine was the pdp-10 at Penn State. It was #46 of the KA-10 line and had a wonderful front panel. Next favorite is of course the 8i which I learned computers on back in the early 70s.

From my notes: Purchased in 1968/1969 time frame for use with EIA-680 Analog Computer for hybrid computation pair. The facility was the Hybrid Computation Lab which was part of the Electrical Engineering Department at the Penn State University Park campus. The system was located in the EE West building. The Hybrid Computer Lab was removed from the EE Department and became a College-wide facility named the Engineering Computer Lab which supported general computer operations in the College. At one time there was the DEC-10, DEC-2020, VAX 11/780, VAX 11/785, VAX 8550, Harris H800, and two IBM 4341 systems along with multiple VS3100 Workstations and assorted microVax systems. When the centralized computing facility was phased out (CEDCC formed) in the 1995/1996 timeframe the DEC-10 and all other systems were scraped.
 
That was a sad day. I remember working on the hybrid (KA-10 connected to an analog computer) that used plug boards and patch cables to do our assignments. 3 people per team. Our team decided to do something with velocity and acceleration so we had a boat crossing the screen (that in itself was neat) and the user could fire a torpedo at it. It would sink in 3 different ways depending on where it hit the ship.
All programmed in Fortran of course.

I also remember the main computer center had an Adage computer they used for creating video by taking one shot at a time and then changing the scene slightly. They had a 2nd Adage for parts too.
 
Back
Top