I forgot to add that some gradual but real progress on adding the MG-1 to MAME is taking place as well. --Tom
On Sat, Nov 5, 2022 at 7:01 PM Tom Stepleton <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, 4 Nov 2022 17:53:10 PM Tony Duell <[email protected]> wrote: > >> More seriously I have a working (last time I turned it on) MG1 with >> monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Also have the technical notes manual and >> an installation disk kit. Another chap I know (I think he's here but >> I'll let him speak up) scanned the manual and coppied the disks last >> year, so there is a backup.This is a 32016-based machine of course. It >> > > Yes hello, this is me. In fact, if you would like to see the Whitechapel > MG-1 in my possession in operation, come up tomorrow (Sunday) to the Centre > for Computing History in Cambridge, where the system is on public display > alongside an AT with a busy bunch of Transputers in it. It's all part of > the Retro Computing Festival that's underway this weekend: > > http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/69485/Retro-Computer-Festival-2022-Saturday-5th-November/ > > If you can't make it to Cambridge, then when the machine is running (which > it isn't at the moment --- wait for between 10 AM and 5 PM GMT Sunday), you > can visit the machine over HTTP at http://mg-1.uk . (Note no https.) > > Working MG-1s and related machines (like the colour CG-1) are rare owing > to leaky batteries (what else). > > I'm very grateful to Tony for his generous sharing of MG-1 materials --- > it helps make it possible to show off the MG-1 in this way! I've got > everything on Google Drive, with links available on the website just > mentioned. Since it's liable to be down when you're reading this, here's an > archive.org link: > > https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124716/http://mg-1.uk/ > > Note also this page with links to 42nix 2.6 OS media, also owing to Tony: > > https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124758/http://mg-1.uk/42nix/42nix.html > > You will probably have to edit archive.org's links out to Google Drive in > order for them to work, but I think it should be pretty easy to do this. > > I have been meaning to make disk images of my best-effort reconstruction > of a clean 42nix 2.5 installation (a predecessor to the version linked > above), which I derived from a disk image taken from one of Jim Austin's > MG-1s. There is not a vast difference for the user at the console between > 2.5 and 2.6, although they did fix a bug in the TCP/IP implementation that > allows a forking HTTP server running on 2.5 to cause a kernel panic. I > suspect revisions to TCP/IP were required to get NFS working, which, I > remember concluding, had been a new feature for 2.6. > > I've never been able to get my hands on GENIX. > > All sorts of spare boards, including things like never-populated bare >> RAM boards for the Hitech,. >> > > It took me a lot longer than I like to admit to realise that HITECH was > derived from wHITECHapel... > > Speaking of discoveries, I found out today that the Centre for Computing > History is in possession of a couple Hitech MIPS machines (sans cases). > Apparently they might have some media on QIC tapes as well. Tony, I'll try > to get you in touch with the person I was speaking with about this. > > Meanwhile TNMOC at Bletchley are in possession of three MG-1s. > > --Tom >
