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The ICT 1301 Resurrection Project.
Events

Past Events

*** The Public Open Day.***

*** July 12th 2009 ***


Click here for a short Video for PC ( about 6mb )
Or here for a Macintosh Video version ( about 17mb )


Morgan ready to power flossie up.
And wearing a picture of my favourite team !


2009 Open Day Summary !

07:52 am and the first thing was to see if flossie was going to work at all today ? We have had problems prior to the open day and we knew it was going to be touch and go, as we had almost called the open day off after one of the main power supplies had given us concerns on the 1st July 2009. The demo program was loaded from the drum and ran at "only" the third attempt. Whilst the machine ran in the background, it was the usual panic to set up the small Gazebo for the visitors and the signs pointing to the event. The first visitors started poking thier heads around the door at about 09:32, a bit later than usual as I had caused a delay earlier in the day ( read the diary entry for the gorry details )

Help this year was from Stuart Fyfe and Morgan, Stuart ( as usual ) had driven a very long way to be with us today and it was nice to see him with Flossie again, for Stuart was an original member of the Galdor group who owned flossie so many years ago. These 'Open Days' are a rolling cycle of running the story, then the demo and then just stopping and talking to the visitors. In between cycles in was great to talk to Mike Stace and recall some of his early GEC days, when Flossie was bieng manufactured in Coventry.

We estimate we demonstrated flossie to over 320 visitors. ( this estimate is based on the number of handouts passed to visitors, at about 220 this year, and further evidence from a time lapse recording camera, a snippet of which is below ) The day was quite warm with both direct sunlight and patches of cloud, so we had to be carefull not to let flossie get too hot. A rest was called at about 13:25 when we had to cool the old lady down, but she ran for about seven and a half hours today. Helped by a freshly installed extractor fan and a few smaller but well placed booster fans to shift the hot spots.

So we are happy that she lasted most of the day before we were forced to power her down as the problem that almost stopped the day happening did eventually come back. As usual the response from the public was great, from those who had experienced such machines from over fourty five years ago to the youngest, who just goggled at the sheer size of the machine, but enjoyed the sound of all the devices working together, and that I have to say is quite a ' Unique Sound ' .


I mostly enjoyed handing out short pieces of Paper Tape to all the little ones, these had ICT1301 punched in Clearwrite so it was readable, freshly punched for them before the day.
However talking to those who recognised the Mainframe period is always fun.



One lady discovered our new card punch, and we are sure she enjoyed reliving the 1960's


Click for some time lapse video of the day
( About 5mb )

A big THANK YOU goes out to all our helpers on the day! including the Marathon driving by Stuart Fyfe, Morgan and of course the Owner Roger.

Eeerrr ! did I forget to mention the Lady Herself ( Flossie ) most remiss of me !








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