Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers's posts Post Back to profile
Top-level
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers

Can you guess my new project by this part? (dimensions are close but not yet exactly correct)

A CAD drawing of a piece of bent metal
12 Jul 2022 at 21:36 | Open on machines.social
10 comments
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers

Hint #1: The part's width is a bit more than 43cm (17").

12 Jul 2022 at 22:29 | Open on machines.social
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers

Hint #2: It is in the same general domain as my full size Memex build.

A desk from the 40s made to look like Vannevar Bush's thought experiment in personal information systems.
12 Jul 2022 at 22:35 | Open on machines.social
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers

Hint #3: The base part shown is an inner frame and is around 43cm (17") wide.

A CAD drawing of a metal part with a sem-transparent blue squircle floating above it at a right angle.
13 Jul 2022 at 3:21 | Open on machines.social
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers

Hint #4: At the end of the project there will be six of them and they'll be in a museum exhibit.

13 Jul 2022 at 3:23 | Open on machines.social
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers

Hint #8: These are metal frames to which rather beige case parts will be attached. The blue is where the glass would be.

A CAD drawing of two metal parts and a blue glass.
16 Jul 2022 at 1:40 | Open on machines.social
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers

Hint #9: It will run Smalltalk '78.

16 Jul 2022 at 1:42 | Open on machines.social
Ding Dang Trevor Flowers replied to Ding Dang Trevor Flowers

Ok, I now have permission to talk about this project in full and in public. I'm working with Alan Kay to build six replicas* of a Xerox PARC Alto display for use in a museum exhibit**. Visitors will see a real Alto and then walk over to one of the replicas to futz with Smalltalk '78***.
Here's a nice writeup of a different project that rejuvenated an actual Alto.
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/0

A computer display, keyboard, and mouse from the Xerox PARC Alto computer which was made in the early 1970s.
18 Jul 2022 at 22:55 | Open on machines.social
Go Up