Trevor "Dust Mouth" Flowers
I had to set up a temporary bench in the middle of the shop space to crate up the remaining four Alto display replicas commissioned by Dr. Kay. When these ship to their new museum homes I will be out of client work and truly retired.
Well, I say that but there is one more longshot project that may come in. It's kind of a dream piece of retrocomputing reproduction so I can't really turn it down as long as I have the tools and health.
#shopLife #retrocomputing (sorta)
Mar 19 at 11:39pmWeb
Show threadTrevor "Dust Mouth" Flowers17h ago
These repros are destined for public use in museums so they are optimized for durability and repairability instead of 100% accuracy. Flat displays, modern keyboards, steel frames, printed case parts, that sort of thing.
They run the excellent ContrAlto emulator.
Show threadKernel Bob 17h ago
@trevorflowers The Alto is my "the one that got away". I knew about them at the time, but never had the opportunity to play with one. I got Smalltalk for my Mac about 1992, but it wasn't the same.
Show threadTrevor "Dust Mouth" Flowers17h ago
@kbob They're dang cool! The main box is loud and hot as heck, though. People at PARC often ran theirs in a different room than the display just to have some quiet. 😸
Show threadKernel Bob 17h ago

@trevorflowers When I visited Stardent (the Stellar half in Boston) in 1992, they had all the engineers' cubicles on the second floor, and the whole first floor was a machine room. The machines were directly under each cubicle with a cable bundle running up through the ceiling.

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Show threadKernel Bob 17h ago

@trevorflowers The Stellar was a "personal supercomputer" about the size of a washing machine and just as loud as you'd expect. We had one at Convex, and we stuffed it into the printer room with cables out to a common area where we could share it.

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Show threadLos Pat Moritas 💾 Naku14h ago
@trevorflowers looks amazing 💾✨