I thought I’d seen one of the real thing in the Smithsonian collection, but I was mistaken.
I appreciate your in-depth analysis of the interesting parts of my shallow musing. Obviously computing power isn’t a problem these days, but knowing that such power can fit in a grain of salt these days… well that was more mind-blowing than I expected. I really was much more curious about the rest of it, and your knowledgeable breakdown was really fun to read!
Agreed; a working tape drive would be a must-have. And there are absolutely physical limitations on things (like a physically accurate printer and the punch cards… although maybe a laser cutter could be used to make them?) but it definitely piques my interest the more I think about it.
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Here is something to listen to as you marvel at the model…
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Yeah, a laser cutter would be an easy way to make punch cards, but the problem is it leaves scorch marks, and and at that scale it’d be more scorch than card. Though I suppose you could just use yellow / brown cards to disguise that.
Or thinking about it, if you’re reading the cards optically, you can just use printed dots instead of punched holes. I think it’d still look convincing, and you could have the full 80 columns per card, which would never work with actual holes.
You don’t necessarily need a punch card reader if you have a tape drive, but it might just be worth it for the extreme cuteness value. Which is doubly true of a lil’ printer, except I just don’t think it’s doable.
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“What is this, a computer for mice?!”
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Deep Thought is a computer that was created by a pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent species of beings (whose three-dimensional protrusions into our universe are ordinary white mice) to come up with the Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything
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I was still using 1401 peripherals attached to a System/3 as late as 1982 - a 1403 printer and a 1409 tape drive. These things were made to last.
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It’s the Friendly Giant’s mainframe.
I heard the story years ago, but never saw the bug!!
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