1 Jun
2020
1 Jun
'20
3:26 a.m.
Please see below, a portion of the response from somebody who works (or
worked) at LCM+L:
The wild speculations of the uninformed have a potential to do great
damage.? The Seattle Times is in that category, in my opinion.
Sadly, the museum is closing for an extended period, as are all the
other public facing entities in Paul Allen?s portfolio.? This is due
entirely to the fact that they **are** public facing, in a time when
the public is unable or unwilling to gather in large groups.? (When
is the next time you plan on going to a movie, for example?)? It is
not out of a desire to dismantle Paul?s legacy, or in contravention
of his intent, or anything of the sort.
Most especially for the collections at Living Computers and at the
Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum, there is no plan to sell
anything.? At LCML, we are working on a very orderly shutdown of
everything which can safely be powered down for extended periods,
and on a plan for how to keep power to those things which will
otherwise die if unpowered for extended periods.? We have a lot of
experience with bringing things up which have been left fallow for
years; we do not want our successors in the future to have to learn
all over again all the things we have had to learn in the past 17 years.
We are still working on what that means for those with accounts on
the on-line systems.? We ask that they be patient; we?ll have an
answer for them in the coming days.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 5/31/20 3:23 PM, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
I'm going to reach out to somebody I know who works there and see what
he might know beyond the news.? Given the "if" in the notice on the
web site, viz: "we will spend the months ahead reassessing if, how,
and when to reopen", things didn't immediately strike me as being
overwhelmingly hopeful.
That would be a bummer if the KL and XKL machines were to go away.? In
some alpha versions of my FTP server, I ran what I thought would be
regression tests on an XKL (at the time, the 2065 was running Tops-10,
so this wasn't possible).? It turns out that I actually found a a
situation that the KLH10 micro-engine gets right but that some
versions of the XLK microcode get wrong.
Briefly, on an XKL-1, you don't want to use any EXTEND based string or
numeric conversion instructions in a non-zero section as the effective
address calculations come out wrong and certain random parts of the
address space get trashed.? Took me awhile to figure that one out...?
I don't recall whether this was fixed, but I would assume it would
have been.
The loss of MRC's 2020's and--more importantly--the data held on them
and related tapes would be an extremely bitter blow.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On 5/27/20 11:15 PM, Gregg Levine wrote:
>
> Hello!
> That part may be closing, but the museum,may survive intact. We just
> don't know. Sometimes even local news does not have all of the facts.
> -----
> Gregg C Levinegregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
> "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 10:53 PM David Cooper<davecoo at marmotking.com>
wrote:
>>
>> It?s not coming back. From the local news, "This means we are winding down
both Vulcan Arts + Entertainment and Vulcan Productions by the end of the year." The
museum was part of Vulcan Arts + Entertainment. Just like the ancient Greek temples that
were destroyed by farmers looking for stone to build houses and walls, the computers will
be recycled for their gold. Human nature has not changed and likely never will. You?ve
heard the phrase, ?The Earth belongs to the living?. Apparently true then and true now.
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> From:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE <owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE> On
Behalf Of Keith Halewood
>>> Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2020 2:40 PM
>>> To:hecnet at Update.UU.SE
>>> Subject: [HECnet] LCM+L suspending operations
>>>
>>> As some of you may have just heard, LCM+L are suspending operations ?for now?
due to the effects of the current crisis. We?ll discover what?ll be happening to online
access to their systems shortly. It?s a sad day but hopefully not permanently so.
>>>
>>> Keith