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What might make this a thousand times better is a way to submit questions online for the Q&A session. Obviously some hard decisions would need to be made about

What might make this a thousand times better is a way to submit questions online for the Q&A session. Obviously some hard decisions would need to be made about which questions to actually ask, but a voting system, while crude, might allow the question database to self-prioritize before the event. --- I have to admit that the question I immediately wanted to ask this group is very offtopic, but I wanted to add the above suggestion anyway because I know others likely would come up with good questions. FWIW, here's what I thought of: The source code to SketchPad turned up online several months ago: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903 http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903 I'd love to see a functional TX-2 emulator that can run SketchPad, and I'd be very willing to commit time to making it a reality. But the source scan is of extremely poor quality, AFAIK comprehensive in-depth info about the TX-2 isn't really out there, and no hardware survives. A better scan would be an excellent start. I'm in Australia, or I'd have volunteered the time to rescan everything a very long time ago. From there, much more info about the TX-2 is needed. I'm reminded of http://martin.poupe.org/casio/ http://martin.poupe.org/casio/ (select "assembler information", the site uses frames) who reverse-engineered and wrote an assembler for his calculator without knowing anything about the architecture - but he had hardware he could experiment with. Again, I realize this is incredibly offtopic...

chanelloren 9y ago
Hi! I am an Associate Producer at the museum and you will have the opportunity to submit questions in the comment section on the Facebook live stream. I will be collection questions from our virtual audience. Go to the museums Facebook page @ 7pm on November 10th. I hope you get a chance to watch live!
- exikyut 9y ago
  Arg! This is so awesome, but I don't have a Facebook account :'(
  - chanelloren 9y ago
    Ahh, I see. Unfortunately, at this time we only collect questions from our in-person audience that attends as well as the comment section from the Facebook live stream player. Apologies about this!
    - exikyut 9y ago
      First of all, a clarification: the Facebook Live stream will be available after the event, right? I presume so, just making absolutely sure! As an aside, it would be cool to have a recorded copy of source-quality video too. Maybe that's being a bit obsessive going that far, but I'm really looking forward to watching this event :) (and the last time I tried Facebook Live myself - doing the filming for someone else - the connection dropped 15 seconds in...) -- About commenting: Hmm. There are few other general-purpose platforms that would be appropriate for this type of task (I can definitely concur that reddit for example wouldn't be concretely ideal, for a variety of reasons). While a noteworthy amount of effort, perhaps the CHM site itself could be adapted to handle this. Obviously it would be most ideal to do this in a generalized way that could be reused for other things as well - maybe articles (such as the event article) could have a comment section (I'm envisaging a simple "Comments »" at the bottom - underneath the Location section in this case), with a realtime backend. That would make the system effectively implement the semantics of comments and realtime chat in one go. A bit of work to implement, but not at all impossible. I'd envisage this feature being used in the context of "it'll probably be most convenient to comment on the Facebook stream directly, but if you don't have Facebook you can also use the CHM site over here." Time would tell what sort of split there would be. I'm unfortunately not too great at keeping a good pace when I start projects (I'm too easily snowed under with real-life distractions and tasks, heh!), and that makes me slightly hesitant about offering to help implementing a system like this. On the other hand it could go really well. How does site maintenance work? Is there a volunteer team for that? -- I noticed that Alan Kay popped in here and answered my question. That was really awesome. :)
alankay1 9y ago
Brian Silverman, who has done some miraculous "bringing back software to life" (and some HW as well), has always wanted to do this. The problem here is partly that no one is quite sure "which" TX-2 has to be emulated, and, worse, where to find the specs. The machine was a research computer and constantly tinkered with, including changing instructions and formats. Also, Sketchpad was written in a macro-assembler (Coral) which was idiosyncratic to say the least. But I would advise contacting Brian to chat about this...
- exikyut 9y ago
  Thanks very much for this first-hand information! :)

chanelloren 9y ago

Hi! I am an Associate Producer at the museum and you will have the opportunity to submit questions in the comment section on the Facebook live stream. I will be collection questions from our virtual audience. Go to the museums Facebook page @ 7pm on November 10th. I hope you get a chance to watch live!

exikyut 9y ago
Arg! This is so awesome, but I don't have a Facebook account :'(
- chanelloren 9y ago
  Ahh, I see. Unfortunately, at this time we only collect questions from our in-person audience that attends as well as the comment section from the Facebook live stream player. Apologies about this!
  - exikyut 9y ago
    First of all, a clarification: the Facebook Live stream will be available after the event, right? I presume so, just making absolutely sure! As an aside, it would be cool to have a recorded copy of source-quality video too. Maybe that's being a bit obsessive going that far, but I'm really looking forward to watching this event :) (and the last time I tried Facebook Live myself - doing the filming for someone else - the connection dropped 15 seconds in...) -- About commenting: Hmm. There are few other general-purpose platforms that would be appropriate for this type of task (I can definitely concur that reddit for example wouldn't be concretely ideal, for a variety of reasons). While a noteworthy amount of effort, perhaps the CHM site itself could be adapted to handle this. Obviously it would be most ideal to do this in a generalized way that could be reused for other things as well - maybe articles (such as the event article) could have a comment section (I'm envisaging a simple "Comments »" at the bottom - underneath the Location section in this case), with a realtime backend. That would make the system effectively implement the semantics of comments and realtime chat in one go. A bit of work to implement, but not at all impossible. I'd envisage this feature being used in the context of "it'll probably be most convenient to comment on the Facebook stream directly, but if you don't have Facebook you can also use the CHM site over here." Time would tell what sort of split there would be. I'm unfortunately not too great at keeping a good pace when I start projects (I'm too easily snowed under with real-life distractions and tasks, heh!), and that makes me slightly hesitant about offering to help implementing a system like this. On the other hand it could go really well. How does site maintenance work? Is there a volunteer team for that? -- I noticed that Alan Kay popped in here and answered my question. That was really awesome. :)

alankay1 9y ago

Brian Silverman, who has done some miraculous "bringing back software to life" (and some HW as well), has always wanted to do this. The problem here is partly that no one is quite sure "which" TX-2 has to be emulated, and, worse, where to find the specs. The machine was a research computer and constantly tinkered with, including changing instructions and formats. Also, Sketchpad was written in a macro-assembler (Coral) which was idiosyncratic to say the least. But I would advise contacting Brian to chat about this...

exikyut 9y ago
Thanks very much for this first-hand information! :)