The Physical Old Calculator Museum

This area is wherre I have the general "office" for the Old Calculator Museum set up. The desk has lots of work space for spreading out documentation or paperwork. A basic PC provides access to the whatever is needed within the infrastructure. A Wang C-52 calculator, currently being written up for an exhibit, sits to the right side of the desk. Cabinets and drawers hold files, backup tapes, and office supplies.

This area is the work area where I work on testing, diagnostics, and repair of calculators. It consists of an anti-static worksurface, with shelving for various pieces of test equipment, including Tektronix TM500 and TM5000 instruments, Tektronix bench power supplies, a Tektronix 2465 Oscilloscope, a Tektronix 1240 Logic Analyzer, a Variac, an Isolation Transformer, and a 120->240V upconverter for operating calculators that use European power. The shelving to the right is used for various storage purposes, including tools, work in process parts, hardware, and electronics supplies. Currently "under the knife" is a Wang 144 Scientific calculator.

This rack contains the servers that operate the computing infrastructure for the Old Calculator Web Museum and my personal computing environment. The rack consists of a Network Appliance F540 fileserver with about 100GB of fault-tolerant disk space. Below the disk shelves and fileserver is the network area, with broadband modem, firewall, and switches, as well as a powerline control transceiver and a wireless LAN access point. Below the network equipment are the servers, which consist of three 1U Rackmount PC's, each with Dual 1GHz Pentium III processors, 2GB of RAM, and either 36 or 72 GB of disk space. The servers are a Linux server that provides basic infrastructure services, another is a BOINC server devoted to SETI@home and ProteinPredicator calculations, and lastly, a Win2K active directory/DNS/Anti-Virus server. Below the servers are a robotic tape drive for backups, and UPS's for backup power.

In this area we see the Anita C/VIII on top of the cabinet, and in the area below are an HP9815A, and an assortment of other smaller calculators. To the right of ths cabinet stands a table upon which sets the Mathatronics Mathatron 8-48M. Below the table is a shelf which contains various Wang 300-series interconnect cables, tees, and connectors. Below that is a storage container that holds the myriad electrical cords used by machines in the museum.

This area consists of a long and sturdy wooden table, upon which a number of Wang calculators are displayed. From the left, the Wang 360SE with two Wang 360KT keyboards, and a CP-1 card reader attached. Next, a Wang 720C with a 705 Microface attached, followed by a Wang 600-14PT. Below the table are stored some Wang 700-series carcasses, the electronics package from a Monroe EPIC 2000, a couple of file cabinets that contain old calculator documentation, a Sharp Memorizer 60 programmer, and the electronics assembly from the museum's Olivetti Programma 101 which is undergoing restoration.

This view shows the end of the wood table that displays the Wang machines. More shelves contain various machines, including an HP-46, Casio fx-1, HP-01 Watch/Calculator, Curta II, Wang 360E/360K, Wang 362E/362K, various Sharp calculators, and a few smaller Casio calculators. The shelving on this area is on the back of the "Calculator Operating Table"

Included in this display are a number of the museum's older machines. From the top, Sony ICC-400W and ICC-500W SOBAX calculators. Next, Friden 1160 and 1162 CRT display calculators. Below that a Casio AL-2000, with various Casio/Sperry Remington horizontal format machines (AS-A/121-A, AS-L, and Lektronic). Next is a Wang LOCI-2 calculator system, including LOCI-2AD calculator, LOCI Printer, and both the first and second design LOCI punched card readers. Below the LOCI is a complete IME 86 system, including the IME 86-S calculator itself, an MS-30 memory register expansion unit, and the DG-308 Digicorder Programmer.

This shelving unit contains an assortment of machines. On the top shelf, a row of later model (mid to late 1970's) Canon desktop calculators. The next shelf has a selection of Burroughs calculators. Following that, SCM/Marchant 412 and 414, and a 212, ending the row with the amazing Takachiho Koheki Descal ASI-500 CRT-display calculator. The middle row displays the SCM Cogito 240SR, Victor 14/322, and Casio/Commodore AL-1000. Below that are the Canon 161, Sharp Compet 20, and Friden(Hitachi) 1112. On the bottom shelf are some early prototype circuit boards from the Friden 130, and a deck of Friden 130 cards used as an marketing give-a-way. Beside them are the Friden 130 and Friden 132.

There's a lot of machines here...too many to list individually, as there is about 77 linear feet of shelving here.

Some of the highlights: A Busicom 161 (bottom left), Busicom's first electronic calculator. Also along this shelf are an NCR 18-2 (made by Busicom for NCR), Friden 1152 printing programmable, a Wang 320E/320K, and some early Olympia-made, Monroe-badged machines. The next row up has a Cintra/Tektronix 909 Scientist, with a Tektronix Model 31 next to it. Of course, the linup of early HP calculators, including a 9100B, 9810A, 9820A, and 9830A. Also, a 9825A with two HP-35's on top (2nd and 3rd design) followed by an HP-85. The next row up has early Canon/Monroe calculators. The next row has a Canon 164P, two Denon calculators, Brother's first calculator, followed by a row of various Computer Design Corp. (Compucorp) & Monroe-badged Compucorp OEM machines. The next row up is mostly filled with Friden/Hitach machines, the 111x-series.Scattered amongst the top two rows are a large assortment of machines from various manufacturers.

This area displays the museum's PDP 11/34A computer system. The system is fully operational. It curretly consists of the 11/34A CPU with programmer's panel, 128K-words of RAM, RX02 controller with two RX02 floppy disc drives, RL11 controller with three RL02 cartridge drives (10 Megabytes/drive), and RK11 controller, but with no RK05 drives currently connected, a serial console interface card, and an 8-Port Serial I/O Card, and a Heathkit H-19 console terminal The system is shown running RSTS/E 9.2. Also in the museum's collection (not pictured) are a DEC PDP 8/e system, with 16K (12-bit words) of core, and 8K of solid state memory, an RK8E controller for RK05 drives, a high-speed punched paper tape reader/punch, and dual RX01 floppy disc drives. It has two serial I/O boards.

Other computers include a complete Altair 8800 system, a North Star Horizon, an Apple II+ system, a Tandy 600 early laptop computer, a complete Atari 800 system, and various Sun systems, including a 3/60, 4/260, Sparc 1+, Sparc 2, Sparc 5, Sparc 10, Sparc Classic, Sparc 20, and Ultra 10.

Reception & Administration