Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island | Hacker News Reader

Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island

rcsri.org

84 pointsnotpachet19 comments

It's fun to see this, mostly because things from Rhode Island don't often end up on the NH front page :)

A related organization, the Rhode Island Computer Museum [1], is also great. Their warehouse (which is unfortunately by appointment only) is full of all sorts of really important gear from computing history. Their Learning Lab is more easily accessible, and has a few old PDPs, if I recall correctly.

It looks like the link may have been missed, but this looks like it's the website: https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home

Thank you for sharing this!

About a year ago I took my son to the RI Computer Museum in North Kingstown, and it was awesome.

The people were super friendly, and I got a great explanation about debugging hardware faults on the PDP (PDP-9?) that was there.

Now if only there were software-dev meetups in this end of the state :)

I lived for awhile in North Kingston RI and I absolutely loved the Rhode Island Computer Mueseum. It was usually staffed by older gentlemen, who would absolutely love to go into any topic related to computers they knew about. One of my now core memories is playing the original space wars on a working (only 8 remaining if i remember correctly) pdp 12 with one of my friends in elementary school.

RICM has one of those PDP-12s. And RCS/RI also has one! Two of these very rare machines, both in working condition, are located within a few miles of each other.

> I lived for awhile in North Kingston RI

You're missing a "w" :)

The local town names are:

Kingston (where Univ. of RI's main campus is)

West Kingston (used to have American Power Conversion's HQ)

South Kingstown (greatest town on earth, and home of Phil's Diner. Suck it, Pawnee.)

North Kingstown (where Quonset huts were first deployed, apparently; and source of the world's best donuts: Allie's Donuts)

I've been to the RICM and while the warehouse is kinda neat, everything is just sitting rusting. They're not doing anything with what they're sitting on, and a lot of it is very poorly protected/packaged. The warehouse was enormous, filthy, and had large doors open to the outdoors (far down the other end, but still.)

They're also (reportedly) rather anti-Apple/Macintosh.

The warehouse is like the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where they file away the artifact into a box to be placed alongside countless shelves of other artifacts. I wouldn't say it's filthy as much as I would say it's dark and cluttered- they can really use some more structured organization and inventory management. They get donations of really large equipment, and their first priority is that it has a place where it won't be scrapped. But they have a ton of stuff, a small staff and modest budget, so they do what they can.

One story they told me is that they are contacted by TV and movie production companies that need period-specific computers and props, so they'll pack up and send out various equipment and lease them out. They come back cleaned up and in better shape than when they sent them out.

> things from Rhode Island don't often end up on the NH front page

Was that a New England-Freudian slip?

While housing obviously takes center stage in real estate market discussions, these quirky little elements in cities all but evaporate when you get past a certain price point. In cities I've lived in, like Boston, the areas I spent time in got so bland in a vaguely upscale, premium-end-of-mass-market sort of way. I moved to a smaller city cheap enough for people to do neat things sort of like this and will never move back to a big city while it's drowning in housing costs and a thoroughly "upmarket basic" cultural bent.

Thank you so much for sharing this! I've been in Rhode Island for a few years and never heard of this. I'll absolutely be making it to their next open house.

RIP "Living Computers Museum" in Seattle :(

It still exists and the SDF helps keep the equipment from falling into direct disrepair

The current word is the "owner" has no interest in it however but cannot close it down. So she's simply letting it fade into memory

So sad. That place was fantastic. I’m surprised the owner won’t let some nonprofit take over.

It does not cease to amaze me how all those large computers are less capable than their heavily miniaturized counterparts that are now part of everything. And how the most common use went from complex mathematical and scientific applications, to TikTok.

The Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818078 - Dec 2014 (6 comments)

Not sure I'll visit, no speccy!

I wish they had an IBM/360 in their collection.

Why that machine in particular?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com