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v.03 (1/16/05)

The "11/30" party

On 11/30/2001, a significant date in our first year as 1130 owners, we had a celebration party for our new acquisition. It was a blast, and we repeated the event on 11/30/2002, 11/30/2003, 1/16/2005, 11/4/2006, and 11/3/2007 (yes, the annual schedule sometimes slips). The most recent four parties were held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, a beautiful and fascinating meeting place we're grateful to be given the use of.

2005's party, v.03, was especially notable because Brian Utley, the 1130's project manager, spoke for nearly an hour on the its design and development, as well as on some other interesting IBM systems. We have MP3's of his talk on the v.03 page.

After a 20-month hiatus, "11/30" v.04 was held on November 4, 2006 as a joint party with the APL BUG, which was celebrating the 40th anniversary of 1 CLEANSPACE. It was again at the Computer History Museum, this time at the same time as VCF 9.0, the Vintage Computer Festival's ninth event and tenth anniversary, with the help of Dag Spicer, the Computer History Museum's Senior Curator, and Sellam Ismail of the VCF.

"11/30" v.05 was held on Saturday, 11/3/2007, in conjunction with the tenth Vintage Computer Festival (VCF X), again at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. We had three guest presenters:

  • Gary Wheeler, part of the original San Jose Disk Monitor and card/paper tape software development team, spoke about the early development of the 1130 through a series of anecdotes.
  • James Matsuyama, who worked for seven years on assembly and test of the "Ramkit" single disk storage device that premiered in the 1130, spoke briefly about mechanical and manufacturing issues related to the 11SD RAMKIT.
  • Richard T. Stofer demoed his FPGA-based 1130 emulator and talked about some of the interesting issues in its implementation.

We will have audio of the presentations up soon along with slides. If you still see this note any time after 12/15/2007, write Norm and tell him to get cracking!

Alcohol was lacking at "11/30" v.05 due to a misunderstanding between us and the CHM, but dim sum and sodas were enjoyed by all.

We send party invitations to everyone on our mailing list. Please write us if you'd like to be invited to the next "11/30" party.