I haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks, partly because the overheads of actually getting into the place outweighed the amount of actual work done. I visited on 7th , 14th, 18th and today the 21st.

Each visit managed to make a little more progress towards getting into a productive work pattern. On Tues 18th we had network restored for the laptop in our office, thanks to the generous help of Jeff Craig (NUIT); this enables email and web searching (obviously), but also backing up the laptop to the University filestore.

There have been various hitches in access to the building (at least it shows how good Sir Robert McAlpine’s security is) but all have been overcome so far. We are becoming familiar faces to SRM’s people, and this also is a good thing.

We (and NUIT as a whole) continue to appreciate the warm cooperation that we get from SRM’s site foremen, and also from the gate staff whom we see most of.

And from the point of view of this Project, I cannot emphasise enough the widespread support we get from NUIT staff, in all their various roles, each of whom will go out of their way, if asked, to help us out of a difficulty. First and foremost I will mention Jason Bain (Assistant Director, Infrastructure), who has quietly given us extremely significant support at several crucial stages, right from the start, in 2016, when we first sought a place to store Roger’s Collection.

Finally:  I happened to be Last Man Out today: Phil the Gateman was just coming to lock up as I left. It was nostalgic being momentarily alone in the Tower, and remembering times past, when – on the last afternoon of work before Christmas – we’d merrily wend our way to the Computer Room, to pick people up to go to the pub(s). The one who stayed behind to look after the Computer Room while we were all out on the town would be Roger.

“We’re having some work done”

The Sub-Basement is relatively untouched, but not so the rest of the Tower. The Basement for example is going to be wonderful when it’s finished, but meanwhile…

Basement, corridor outside Janice’s office

Opposite corridor (Basement Entrance)

“Data Prep Room“

Director’s Office

I was able to do something positively useful today, as well as cleaning up and checking doors (see entry below), and this was to (a) check the BOMs that we have, for imminent display in the USB and (b) retrieve some spare bulbs 🙂

This is a BOM – Basic Operational Memory Unit. (It has nothing to do with Bletchley’s Bombes) :

Roger tells you all about BOMs here — it’s a great web page; see the link 3rd from bottom, which shows you where the BOMs fit in on the 360-67 mainframe. There were eight BOMs in 1967 (in two immense cabinets), but NUMAC later bought another two memory units, thus making 16 in all … thus giving this juggernaut One Whole Megabyte of memory. There are two in the Collection: one wonders where the other 14 went — not all to the scrapman, I’ll bet.

I also retrieved some spare bulbs that we can put in any blank holes that we find in the 360 console or the DAT panel — I knew we had some somewhere, and by golly I found them.

Long entry sorry: important to record procedures in case of accident, premature demise, and so on and so forth..

Today I was able to visit the Claremont Tower Repository again for the first time since 5th October (see entry).   The Repository is where the Roger Broughton Collection actually lives: it feeds the Computing displays in the Urban Sciences Building.
On Monday I was issued with the correct Personal Protection Equipment by NUIT, and Safety-inducted by SRM (Sir Robert McAlpine), who have an extremely strict safety and security regime.  Today I made my first foray alone into the building, and it all worked (entrance is by fingerprint).

I was glad to find that our “territory” was unchanged from when we left on 5th October (not by any means a certainty: I was very relieved). Before going to CT, I had to go to Black Horse House, where NUIT now live, to sign out the key which is needed to enter the specific area where our two offices are: the steel security door  now remains locked, since NUIT staff are no longer permanently located in CT.

Changes made: there is no water in the building (this does not mean that there will be no flood!  although it does reduce the odds); emergency lighting has been installed all over the lower floors, because they are now one of the builders’ fire exits. This installation has caused muck and dust to be deposited all over the floors. I spent a little time sweeping up, so that your feet don’t crunch wherever you walk. I’m sorry: I forgot to take pictures of this interesting part of a curator’s job.

I  checked each of our locations: all seem to be untouched, and our four locked doors were all still locked. I remain nervous:  SRM are not going to go below Basement Level, but there is a  large air conditioning contract going on in the Sub-Basement, there are signs that Estates keep doing “things” in the Sub-Basement, and in addition yet more contractors will be coming some time in the next few months to upgrade network cabling. In short: I have no jolly idea of what is going on, or is planned to be going on, in these sensitive areas.

Finally: the network in our office has gone off, so we cannot email from there, or back-up the catalogue to central store, etc. I am contacting the relevant people to enquire about this.

We are a volunteer-driven project, and volunteer-driven projects live or die by their community. Thankfully, there’s a lot of interest in this project and we are frequently contacted by people who want to get involved.

At the moment, our main method of communication is e-mail via mailing list. This works for the current volunteers, but I’m worried it isn’t attractive or welcoming for newcomers.

It’s high-volume mailing list, and managing high volume  lists is a bit of a lost art. I’ve just taken a look at my “cs-history” mail folder, which goes back to 2015. I have 2,577 messages, totalling 462M of storage. So whenever I recommend to people that they subscribe to the mailing list, I also strongly suggest setting up mail filters to keep the list out of people’s inboxes.

So I’m wondering: should we be doing something else? Are you interested in taking part, but put off by the mailing list? Should we tweak its settings: perhaps open up the archives so non-subscribers can read them? Do you have a suggestion for something else we should try? Please either email (heh) me suggestions or leave a comment on this blog post.

(I sink to the depths of the rest of the media by using a punning title. But it’s a good pun.)
Yesterday Dr Clive Gerrard (retired Assistant Director, Computing Service) and I (John Law) moved the front console of the IBM 360/67 from Claremont Tower to the USB, in preparation for the 360-themed display which, it is hoped, will open in the first week of November.

The console (which fronted the CPU of the mainframe) moved into Claremont Tower, along with about 12 tons of the rest of the computer, in August 1967. The mighty machine was decommissioned and scrapped in 1984. Roger saved many parts, among which the front console was the prize exhibit.  The console lived in various places for the next 34 years, until yesterday.

Today (5th October) is the last working day of NUIT in the Claremont Building: next Monday all staff move to Black Horse House (behind Civic Centre) — for good.  This ends 51 years of Computing’s association with Claremont Tower  …. but not quite!  The Computer Room in the Sub-Basement remains intact (as it had to), and systems staff will continue to visit it. For the foreseeable future.

This was taken in the very early 1970s. Console at work! Or rather not: the lovely Ada is surrounded by concerned System Programmers: a glitch has occurred, work has come to a halt. Keith Barnett and Pete Whillance are the two SPs that we can see.

The console spent most of its retired life (so far) in Roger Broughton’s office.

An unfamiliar view, of the back of the console. See the wonderful work of IBM’s engineers in designing and bulding this thing of beauty. Clive and I are about to pack it up …

… in its bespoke transportation crate.

Luxury transport awaits.

And so we leave Claremont Tower to Sir Robert McAlpine…

… for the bright open spaces of the Urban Sciences Building, at The Helix.

Today Sir Robert McAlpine (Builders) started closing the net on the Claremont Complex (Tower, Bridge and Daysh): all entrances/exits are gradually being closed for access, and the complex is now officially a building site.

The lifts are now unavailable (from 1700 today), and just in time we managed to move a pile of “stuff” from Bridge Floor 3 to the Sub-Basement refuge; this pile included the two back walls from the famous “Perspex Display Cabinets”, and three boxes of miscellaneous bits (now known as artefacts) which Adèle has fielded from the crowd leaving the Bridge next week, as NUIT move into Black Horse House. Kevin Dixon (Infrastructure Support Group) helped me move the great unwieldy back walls to the SB: our thanks to him, and we’ve noted him down as a strong lad, for future reference 🙂

Our storage space is now crammed out with moved items, and new items: my own task in the next few weeks (if I get into the SB), will be to tidy up and organise all these things, and hopefully retrieve some space.

On that topic, certain members of NUIT staff will have to be granted access (under very strict conditions) to the SB, and we are hoping that one or two others may be permitted on to that list (including me). There will now be a couple of weeks of uncertainty while handover is completed: the operation for Sir Robert McAlpine is very much complicated by having to allow access to non-employees through their site.

Below, you can see the tidying-up task now required in SB6…

The back walls, crammed into SB6; they are facing another prize: the mural which was part of Claremont Tower Lobby for 40 years or more.

Here on the floor you see the Silicon Graphics workstation that Adèle received from ICAMB (Med School) two weeks ago. It weighs a ton (not quite).

A box of “stuff” rescued from the WEEE recycling; includes tools used by networking engineers, as well as computing electronica.

Foreground: another box, ditto. Background: two shelves-worth of “The Wendy Bond Donation”, which comprises an eMac, and a Macintosh Performa 600, with Stylewriter.

A few more of the items that have come out of the woodwork during the big tidy-up of Claremont Complex as per previous post. Not sure if we will want to keep everything but all are up for consideration for inclusion in the Collection or displays. Then comes the job of cataloguing them all….

Iomega Zip Drive – unfortunately no drive – just empty case – donated by Gavin Younger

WACOM drawing pad – rescued from WEEE by AMD

Avometer DA116 – rescued from WEEE by AMD – front view

Avometer DA116 – rescued from WEEE by AMD – rear view

HP laptop dock – rescued from WEEE by AMD

Courier Dual Standard modem – donated by Michael Lancastle (Network Team) with power supplies, cables, etc.

Apple PowerBook G4 (minus memory) – donated by Mark Agar

Toshiba USB external floppy drive – donated by Infrastructure Systems Team via AMD

IBM – floppy disc – can’t remember who gave me that ! Maybe Karen Wilson

Digital Counter – TSA 6636 – rescued from WEEE by AMD

RM NIC – donated by Jeff Craig (Network Team) – has been in his desk drawers for years he says…

A bit of an odd one… but we just don’t get this kind of quality from our suppliers any more ! Great little folder, pad and gel pen. Probably not that old. We can use it in SB6 for writing notes 🙂 – rescued by AMD from one of the recycle bins!!

After many decades working in Claremont Tower and Bridge, Newcastle University’s central IT team are to move to new accommodation on Monday, 8th October. We’ve all been encouraged to clean out our ‘junk’ before the move. A few weeks ago, I reminded staff to be careful with throwing out ‘junk’ in case any of it was a potential artefact that could be included in the Collection. Here’s what came out of the woodwork…. (I’ve split this into 2 posts because there are so many images and things were getting unwieldy whilst I was trying to upload them)…

MC102XL Fast Ethernet Media Converter – rescued from WEEE by AMD

HP ProCurve switch 2524 – rescued by AMD from WEEE pile

MC101 Fast Ethernet Media Converter – rescued by AMD from WEEE pile

ProCurve Switch 2610-24 –  rescued by AMD from WEEE pile

Ethernet 803.3 10 BASE-T Hub – rescued from WEEE by AMD

Micronet SP260 10BASE-T Etherhub – rescued from WEEE by AMD

Digi AnywhereUSB – 5 port network USB hub – donated by Infrastructure Team (via AMD)

Belkin 2-port network USB hub – donated by Infrastructure Systems Team – via AMD

Belkin 2-port network USB hub – rear view

IPad – rescued from WEEE by AMD (front view) – model A1474

IPad – rescued from WEEE by AMD – back view

Today I completed the moving of the two perspex display cabinets from Bridge Floor 3, down to storage in the Sub Basement, SB17.  This “room” used to be a broom cupboard under the stairs: we occupied it a few weeks ago, thinking it might come in useful, and it has.

The two cabinets (which are spectacularly good, for displays) were bought by the School some years ago, and used to be on Floor 6 of the Bridge, displaying historical hardware  for the benefit of Computing students.

They were moved to Floor 3 (NUIT) when the School moved last year to USB — thanks to Adèle for the idea, and to Michelle for organising the wonderful porters who moved them bodily – assembled – down to Floor 3 (see below); this was NOT, repeat, NOT, an easy operation: the cabinets are extremely heavy, yet every part is very delicate, being polished perspex.

They have provided a slightly up-graded display for NUIT staff for almost a year, but now NUIT are moving out, and so we had to rescue them before Estates move in with their contractors, builders, and waste disposal people.

NUIT staff have effected this rescue: Adèle is ‘Project Manager’, but Paul Kobasa has been the major helper in doing the work., which has taken many person hours. The cabinets had to be dismantled, wrapped in heavy duty clingfilm, and otherwise protected, and finally moved to a “safe place” (we hope).

The two back walls remain on Floor 3 (too big for me to move alone) but we hope to have them out of there next week.

Christian and Phil, the porters who engineered the move, 13 Oct 2017. Christian is just over 6′ tall; each cabinet weighs more than he does.

Each cabinet has 11 pieces; they have been laid flat, on top of pallets (in case of flood!), and with a layer of 25mm polystyrene between each piece. The doors (on left) were just too wide to be laid flat. There remain the two back walls (6′ x 4′) .. a 3-man lift (two to lift one to open doors). Adèle has carefully labelled every piece, to maximise possibility of successful re-assembly.

One cabinet has had “corner protection” (cardboard bits) added; there was no time to do this on the other cabinet.

Finally, the two pedestals have been snugged in, standing on their own “flood protection” (will an inch or two be enough?).