Some fun photos from Large Scale Systems Museum near Pittsburgh!

[shamylzakariya@urbanists.social]

@mwichary so many great usernames in that list

[drwave@mastodon.social]

@mwichary is that blood or rust on the key?

[1000millimeter@chaos.social]

@mwichary @foone

[sultmhoor@christmas.tattoo]

@mwichary I loved my D100 - wish I had never given it away.

[montyhayter@mstdn.social]

@mwichary That one twigged some nostalgia: My father worked for Control Data, and some of my earliest clear memories are of him taking me to work, and seeing an animated Snoopy in flying ace gear flying his doghouse across the screen — in ASCII art no less, at first.

Long time ago. <sigh>

(As a bonus, the amber brought to mind my old Hyperion mostly-PC-compatible “portable”, which I still have)

[montyhayter@mstdn.social]

@mwichary My dad had an old electronic calculator — an enormous thing that must have weighed 20 kg — with a row of 10 or 12 Nixies for the display.

It was fascinating to watch in use, because it was *just* slow enough to see the digits flicker back and forth while it was calculating the answer.

[accordionbruce@mastodon.social]

@michaelgemar @mwichary
“infant set up”
whew

[typearture@typo.social]

@mwichary Thank you! Some beautiful examples. Always love the vibrancy of some of those old machines. And of course some good clunky switches!

[chancerubbage@mastodon.social]

@mwichary

Well generally I have seen those tractor feed terminals with keyboards, just not with such striking design and colors.

[apple4ever@mastodon.social]

@mwichary oh those are some niiiiiiice switches

[screambiogenesis@mastodon.social]

@mwichary The terminal on top of the short-stack PDP-11s in the first picture is one of the most perfectly futuristic things I've ever seen. Any chance you remember what it is? [edit: Oop, nevermind, found it. DEC VT05 (or possibly VT8-E)!]

(Also I've never noticed the proofreading-style insert/delete keys before, but I love them)

[shadychars@mastodon.social]

@mwichary Postmodernism.

[bitnacht@bitbang.social]

@mwichary Why? Because they are great for some people. The ball inside is round and it feels right to grab round things. Why do most companies go out of their way to make mice look like this odd shape that is like nothing you touch in normal life?

If today’s UI wasn‘t that hostile to single-button-no-scroll-thingie I‘d be rocking the puck every single day.

[owiecc@en.osm.town]

@mwichary Long live the vertical Enter! The only correct orientation.

[susiarnott@mastodon.green]

@mwichary Lovely thread that badly needs AltText (would serve the fully sighted well, too)

[darkling@mstdn.social]

@mwichary We need more on/off switches to be like this.

[edit: me->be]

[asciijungle@norden.social]

@mwichary OMG this thread is spectacular! Thanks for sharing! 🤩

[darkling@mstdn.social]

@mwichary Another one for your list: I used one on a Dec MicroVax II, back in the late '80s. It had quite a large diameter, and fit reasonably well under the hand.

[jimmac@mastodon.social]

@mwichary Can't wait for the next Severance season

[pesche@mastodon.green]

@mwichary We had a screen-less printer terminal for our PDP-something in high school (Gymnasium) in the early eighties. IIRR it was able to print symbols for the APL programming language