I like old computers, and museums. And I love those super rare museums that let you go hands on with the exhibits. The System Source museum is one of those rare museums.

I’ve been to syssrc a couple of times. Each during an open house with Usagi Electric. This time is no exception. However, the Bendix G15 vacuum tube computer that he has been restoring for the museum, is working. And it’s back at syssrc!

Phone Calls

The museum had made a number of additions since my last visit. The big one, is a working step by step phone switch.

They had a few phone hooked up to it, that you could dial. It was also hooked up to syssrc’s internal phone system (via a Cisco box in the corner), so you could dial out from it.

This thing was pretty popular. It was constantly getting played with. To the point that the ringing circuit, stopped ringing. It would still make calls, it just had trouble ringing the phone being called. That didn’t stop me from playing with it a ton.

But, on the other side of the wall, was the main show.

The Bendix G15

If you’ve been fallowing Usagi’s restoration of the G15, here she is.

She was printing mandelbrots on the typewriter, and playing the doom theme over a speaker¹. They had demo games that they wrote, and were testing, things were going pretty great. That was until, something happened.

David pulled out the tape drive, and a loose connector touched some of the logic pins. Shorting them… That’s when the G15, just stopped. Yep, he broke it.

The rest of the day, was just them trying to figure out what broke where.

The main issue. The schematics they had, were for a slightly older revision of the G15. They figured that out when it told them to check a card location, that didn’t exist on their machine.

Sadly, they didn’t get it working by the time us common folk got kicked out. Hopefully they get it working for the main day tomorrow. But at least I got to see it running.

You Need To Visit

If you are into old computers, and are near Baltimore Maryland, you need to visit this place. Most of the systems on display work, and you get to play with them! You do have to make an appointment on their website, but damn is it worth it.