Vintage computers in the National Museum Of Scotland

[SiriusHardware]

I had a brief opportunity to call in to the National Museum Of Scotland (Edinburgh) today and found they had a small but interesting selection of retro computers in their Science / Technology wing.

They seem a little bit confused about how to classify them though: The Sinclair ZX81, Commodore PET (a chiclet 2001 example) and what appeared to be an original Apple 1 mounted in a briefcase sat side by side with a trio of sewing machines. (Eh?)

Elsewhere there was a cabinet which did appear to contain only computer and computer related items, including a rubber-key Sinclair Spectrum with Interface 1 (but no microdrive) and a BBC B with disc drive, and an Osborne 'luggable' computer and a 'Grid' portable computer along with an original iPad (Mk1) tablet.

Apart from the PET, Commodore were strangely under-represented (no Vic-20 or C64, no Amiga) and Atari not represented at all (no 400, 800 or ST).

I took a few pictures and will post some if they are any good - the subjects were mostly rather under-lit.

[paulsherwin]

This often happens with non-specialist museums, even big ones. The curators do their best, but have no real understanding of the subject.

[SiriusHardware]

I've just had a very brief trawl through their collection (which is searchable online) and found they do have more classic computers and related items than they have on display - for example they do have a Commodore Vic-20 and seemingly dozens of Commodore 128 specific software titles, so I suspect that somewhere under that heap there will be an actual Commodore 128 although I didn't find it in the short time I spent looking. It also looks as though they may have more than one Commodore PET.

I can appreciate that a 'Museum Of Everything' will always have more artifacts than it will have space to display but I don't think it is too much to ask that those items which have been chosen for display should be grouped together in a logical way.

[ortek_service]

Thanks for the Info (although I'm not sure I'll ever get to go to Edinburgh as a rather long way - Only ever been to Inverness / John O'Groats on East-side and Fort William in the West, but must have gone reasonably close on the way).

But you'd have thought they might at least have had an IBM PC - being as Scotland had a Factory building these there originally for the UK etc market.
Not sure if Hewlett Packard (or even Motorola), who I believe were all based in 'Silicon Glen', also built any computers up there?

[SiriusHardware]

Also, I'm sure ZX81s were largely made in Dundee - both the kits and the assembled ones, I think - but while there was a ZX81 displayed, no mention was made of its 'Made in Scotland' heritage.

[Phil__G]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

... 'Made in Scotland'

From Girders?

[ScottishColin]

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, but it's interesting nonetheless.

I went on a customer visit to IBM Greenock where they made PS/2s (amongst other things) in the 90s and we were walked through the production line and the testing fcilities where they tested for temperature (high and low) and vibrations. It was an interesting day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOkiNe0-jxw

With regards to Timex at Dundee, they made the ZX81 and the Spectrum before they started making their own version of Timex Spectrums (which weren't as successful as the UK versions).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krss_MczGKE&t=41s

It is said that there were more Spectrums per home in Dundee than in any other area in the UK due to them disappearing out of the back door of the factory. This has led to a very large (multi-million) dollar software industry in Dundee that amongst other things has produced Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto.

My mother-in-law worked at Timex making watches and her father was a senior engineer there back in the 50s and 60s.

There's a big story to be told about the technology manufacturing industry in Scotland (aka Silicon Glen) which has morphed into the software, gaming and services industry.

Colin.

[ortek_service]

Thanks for the info.

I do recall original IBM PC Model 5150's having a label with Greenock on them.
But it's surprising they were still making PC's there into the 90's, as it seemed IBM had pretty-well lost virtually all of the PC market to all the clones by then.
I presume they didn't test every-one of these over temperature and under vibration (may not have been too-healthy for HDD models!) - and maybe just left them on 'soak-test', like with TV's etc at the time.

I presume Timex were just an assembly subcontractor for Sinclair for the ZX81, before Timex(USA) produced their own-branded variant for sale in the USA (so I'd assumed they were made over there).
I hadn't realised Spectrum's were made in Scotland, as most I saw were stamped as being made in the Far-East (S.Korea etc. but not Japan).

I also didn't know that Dundee had such a computer (software) industry - I know Leamington Spa is still a hub for Games-Console's software, after previously have many 8bit Computer Software companies there.

[SiriusHardware]

It is said that there were more Spectrums per home in Dundee than in any other area in the UK due to them disappearing out of the back door of the factory. This has led to a very large (multi-million) dollar software industry in Dundee that amongst other things has produced Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto.

I was aware that Dundee was a bit of a gaming industry hot-spot but I'd never connected that with knowing that the ZX81 and original Spectrums were made there.

I hadn't realised Spectrums were made in Scotland, as most I saw were stamped as being made in the Far-East (S.Korea etc. but not Japan).

I think probably by the time of the 'Amstrad Spectrums' and particularly the +2 and +3 machines they most likely were being made in the far east.

There's a big story to be told about the technology manufacturing industry in Scotland (aka Silicon Glen) which has morphed into the software, gaming and services industry.

A story which the displays at the National Museum of Scotland singularly failed to tell, unfortunately.

A few of the objects did have some expanded detail, for example the BBC B was mentioned as having been part of the computer literacy project of the 80s, and the GRID 'laptop' was mentioned as having been used on space missions. Above the BBC B there was also a little montage of three single board computers, a Raspberry Pi V1, an Arduino Uno and a Micro:Bit which, collectively, could be said to be continuing what the BBC B started.

The Apple 1 PCB in a briefcase with its original keyboard and CRT monitor is alarmingly valuable these days, but then the whole building is filled with all sorts of priceless historic treasures making this one look rather ordinary.

[ScottishColin]

From my limited research, the PS/2s were made between 1987 and 1995. We used to have thousands of them - predominantly Model 70s, but also 80s and 95s as servers. They were great to work on as everything pulled apart easily and you could drive a tank over them.

Also the IBM plant codes are listed below, so anything with a serial number starting 55- was made at Greenock. I have an IBM mouse and an IBM Model M keyboard here that both have 55- suffixes on their serial numbers so they were made down the road.

https://www.ardent-tool.com/misc/Plant_Codes.html

Here's a bit more background about the Timex Sinclair computers that were built:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair

Colin.

[paulsherwin]

Scotland has a massive engineering history which continues to some extent to this day. There's a good reason why the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise was supposedly 'Scottish'.

The PS/2 was really a last ditch attempt by IBM to regain control of the corporate PC market. They ran lots of FUD marketing campaigns suggesting that only PS/2s would run OS/2 reliably (this was nonsense). Eventually the corporate market lost interest in OS/2 anyway rendering the PS/2 commercially dead, after which IBM bailed out of the entire sector.

[SiriusHardware]

Here's a bit more background about the Timex Sinclair computers that were built:

Interesting, I had thought the 'American Spectrums' were basically just ours with adequate RF shielding which would have been insisted upon by the FCC.

I knew the USA version of the ZX81 had 2K instead of our meagre 1K. Both of my ZX81s have PCBs which are laid out to accept either 1K or 2K, but instead they both have 62256 SRAMs fitted (by me) for 16K of internal, stable RAM which doesn't hang out of the back of the machine, ruin its looks and lose its memory contents at the slightest bump. (One half of the 32K 65526 is not utilised - to use it would be slightly more complex and also pointless, as no commercial software ever utilised more than the official maximum of 16K).

The Museum's of Scotland's ZX81 has a rampack fitted to it, but it is one of Memotech's 'sculpted' memory add-ons which continues the lines of the ZX81's housing, more in line with the way Rick Dickinson (designer of the ZX81's external looks) had intended the official RAM pack to look.

[ScottishColin]

There were a couple of big errors at the beginning of OS/2 - one as you say with IBM linking OS/2 with PS/2s and the other being IBM's insistence that OS/2 should run on a 286 when it was just far too slow.

We had over 10,000 PS/2s running OS/2 and I can remember having Olivetti lined up as a fall back as they made MCA machines, and also Madge MCA Token Ring Cards (we were 100% Token Ring then) as a replacement for IBM Token Ring cards if needed.

It gave me my career as I become an OS/2 Engineer, LAN Server and Warp Server Engineer, but Windows did to OS/2 what it had previosuly done to Novell so in the end I backed then wrong horse.

IBM did make efforts with OS/2 v3 and v4 to run on ISA and EISA machines but it was too late then.

Colin.

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

Scotland has a massive engineering history which continues to some extent to this day. There's a good reason why the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise was supposedly 'Scottish'.

The PS/2 was really a last ditch attempt by IBM to regain control of the corporate PC market. They ran lots of FUD marketing campaigns suggesting that only PS/2s would run OS/2 reliably (this was nonsense). Eventually the corporate market lost interest in OS/2 anyway rendering the PS/2 commercially dead, after which IBM bailed out of the entire sector.

[jimjim1]

Originally Posted by ScottishColin

(we were 100% Token Ring then)

My favourite Token Ring was Full Duplex Token Ring.

Or as I like to call it —
Full Duplex Token-less Ring-less Token-Ring, as it had neither tokens nor rings.

The topology was like full-duplex switched Ethernet with no contention for media access at all. Every wire (differential pair of course) was dedicated to a single Tx and a single Rx. So no rings and no need for tokens to moderate access to the medium.

Never saw a piece, only the ads. Phew!

[jimjim1]

Originally Posted by ScottishColin

but Windows did to OS/2 what it had previosuly done to Novell

This is my best understanding, I was not inside any of this, some details may be incorrect.

Microsoft, it appears to me, made fake partnership agreements with first 3Com and then IBM. The only intent was firstly to waste the "partners" resources and then to divert them down what Microsoft made sure was a technological dead end (due largely to lack of MS support for it).

With 3Com it was network servers and workstations. The debacle nearly bust 3Com which was Microsoft's intention. Similarly MS and IBM laid out an OS roadmap of DOS->OS/2->OS2 ver3 (or whatever they were going to call it).

MS co-operated enough to keep IBM interested and simultaneously went all-in on NT development in secret. NT was in essence what OS/2 v3 was going to be but years earlier. By then MS had a huge Windows user base due to the success of Windows (esp "for workgroups"). Kabluey IBM.

Novell and Netscape found themselves selling stuff that MS started giving away.

Robert Metcalfe of 3Com is quite entertaining about it all.

[ortek_service]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

>>
>>

I think probably by the time of the 'Amstrad Spectrums' and particularly the +2 and +3 machines they most likely were being made in the far east.
>>
>>

I was thinking only of the original 16/48K Spectrums.
- I've just had a look at a few of these cases I've got and found that actually most I had (mainly older? 'scrap' ones, I need to try and restore one day) said 'Made in UK' (No mention of Scotland factory, so not sure if they were also built in other factories in England etc).

But other ones of these said 'Made in the Republic of Korea' 'by Samsung' - Probably a bit later than the earliest ones, but still probably only an Issue 3 at most.
By the time of the later issues 4-6, I would expect most would have been built in the Far-East, to minimise costs.

[Timbucus]

Most were made at Timex Dundee and later in Korea as you say but, there were a few made at AB Electronics in South Wales https://museum.wales/articles/1306/Dragons-zebras-and-doorst...ng-a-collection-of-Welsh-computers/

[ortek_service]

Thanks for the info - I hadn't realised that AB Electronics (quite well-known as one of the main assemblers of the BBC Computer - and also did the Electron, that I didn't know was done in the UK), also did (rival) Sinclair Computers.
Plus that they also assembled Torch Computers, which was quite closely linked to Acorn on their early machines and Z80 Co-Pro, that ran their 'CP/N' version.

Although the Dragon is probably the most famous 'Welsh' Computer, being produced by DragonData, it seems they didn't actually design it, but got PA Consulting in Cambridge to do it! (Project 'Pippin'): https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/1337/dragon-32/#:~:t...lop%20a%20prototype%20the%20machine.

It seems Museums-Wales are trying to have am exhibit of all Computers made in Wales
- which you'd think maybe Scottish museums might also want to do for ones built there.


But with (Dutch-designed) ZEBRA 'Mainframes' (that I'd not heard of before), which were built in Wales, they might have struggled the get one as only 40? / 55? were made, however Cardiff Uni have donated one to them. Although the museum's webpages don't show any pictures of it.
And only this collection record (of the Power unit): https://museum.wales/collections/bronze-age-gold-from-wales/...ebra-computer-cabinet-1961/?size=48

With short mentions of these ZEBRA Computers being made in Wales / used at Cardiff Uni:
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~cmi/physics/computers.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZEBRA_(computer)#:~:text=The%2...20binary,in%20the%20Bendix%20G%2D15.

However, there's rather-more info on the ZEBRA - Including pictures and even a PC Windows Emulator application, elsewhere:
https://stlqcc.org.uk/stantec-zebra/
https://studieverzameling.ewi.tudelft.nl/images/pdf/kzebra-v1.0.pdf
https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/dutch-computers-of-the-50s-and-60s-mona-lisa-and-zebra/3245/3

[wireman]

Have not been to the museum for a while but don't remember much of a computer exhibit.
Easy for me to pop in and check though.
When I was young the water wheel was the main attraction for me.

[SiriusHardware]

In through the main doors, turn right, walk to the end of the largely empty great hall and go up to the rooms at the end on the third floor, that's where the sciency stuff is. What computers there are are in two separate glass cabinets somewhat apart from each other.