Where is it?

[nw]

This took me a little by surprise (again it seems - I was told about this once before) while searching for material on the B5500:

From Datamation, Volume 24, Part 1, 1978

QUOTE

THE B5500 FINDS A RESTING PLACE AT THE SMITHSONIAN

History buffs will be glad to learn that the first production model of the Burroughs B5500 was saved at the 11th hour last month from the scrap heap and soon will rest at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Serial No. 101 of the first machine to offer virtual...

ENDQUOTE

I tried to coerce GOOG to widen the snippet from the magazine but my efforts were foiled. If someone has access to a copy of the magazine it would be good to see the rest of the text. Even better if anyone is going to Washington or has contacts at the Smithsonian and could enquire about the machine, I think we would be all quite interested to learn about its current disposition.

[Al Kossow]

On 11/30/13 8:31 PM, nw wrote:
> This took me a little by surprise (again - I was told about this once before) while searching for material on the B5500:
>
> From Datamation, Volume 24, Part 1:

>
> QUOTE
> THE B5500 FINDS A RESTING PLACE AT THE SMITHSONIAN

> History buffs will be glad to learn that the first production model of the Burroughs B5500 was saved at the 11th hour last month fro mthe scrap heap and soon will rest at the Smithsonian Institution

> in Washington. Serial No. 101 of the first machine to offer virtual...
> ENDQUOTE
>

it's in the March, 1978 issue

THE B5500 FINDS A RESTING PLACE AT THE SMITHSONIAN
History buffs will be glad to learn that the first production model
of the Burroughs B5500 was saved at the 11th hour last month from
the scrap heap and soon will rest at the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington. Serial No. 101 of the first machine to offer virtual

memory has been working away at the Burroughs Corp. plant in Pasadena
ever since it came off the production lines in 1962. It was replaced
in February with a B6700 and ordered dismantled and sold for scrap at
12 cents a pound before the March 6 California inventory tax assessment
of about $24,000.
Daniel D. McCracken, the ACM's vice president who earlier had
rescued the venerable Bush Differential Analyzer from a similar fate
at UCLA, put Burroughs people in touch with the Smithsonian. And
later in February, arrangement were under way in Pasadena to ship
the B5500 to Washington, even though connecting pins on the panels
of the machine's 10 cabinets had randomly been bent and cables cut
to insure that the B5500 never again would work as a computer.
Burroughs next problem: what to do with the last production model
of the B5500 which the company donated to Union College in
Schenectady, N.Y. That computer is being replaced with a B6800
and is due to be dismantled in the fall.

[Bob McKenzie]

I believe the machine was serial number 102 not 101.  We were using 102 in the early 1970s before large systems was moved to the City of Industry.  Interestinly I thing it was in 1970 that a bug was found in system 102 that was a wiring error from when 102 was ungraded from a B5000 to a B5500.  Interesting that it took all those years for the circumstances to be right for the error to first show up.

[Sid McHarg]

Bob

Thanks for sharing your wealth of information.

Did you perchance have any involvement with what I believe was a custom engineering request initiated at the behest of the US Army to permit direct execution of MCP code out of AUXMEM?  As I recall it being described to me many years ago, the MCP code would be moved to AUXMEM, and then a variant of a DIAL operator used to trigger execution from the alternate location.  I would hazard a guess that code fetches while the processor was in control state would result in this behavior, so presume that at a minimum all save code would need to reside there, and ESPBIT would need to place the demand loaded code there as well.

Best regards,

-Sid McHarg

On Jan 10, 2019, at 11:11 PM, Bob McKenzie <mcke...@midcoast.com> wrote:

I believe the machine was serial number 102 not 101.  We were using 102 in the early 1970s before large systems was moved to the City of Industry.  Interestinly I thing it was in 1970 that a bug was found in system 102 that was a wiring error from when 102 was ungraded from a B5000 to a B5500.  Interesting that it took all those years for the circumstances to be right for the error to first show up.

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[Paul Kimpel]

I saw the machine on display in the Museum of Science and Technology many years ago, but someone (I don't remember who) told me it is no longer there and has been moved into storage.

[Bob McKenzie]

I was suppose to go to Langley near Washington for a meeting with NASA on January 4th but with the government closed down it did not happen.  Once it opens up again, ... someday, the meeting will have to be rescheduled but I don't have any idea when. Whenever I do get down to Langley if I have time I can stop by the Smithsonian.  Seems like a better strategy is for someone to query the Smithsonian directly, (i.e., by phone or possibly on line), once the government opens up again.  If we could get more info from the Smithsonian before I go down.  Following up would probably be more productive.

[Bob McKenzie]

I was directly involved in the changes to the MCP for the DCP and the Auxiliary Memory but I knew who was.  Two guys were doing all of the work on the MCP up to when I left and they closed down the B5500/B5700 group within a year of when I left.  The guy who did the work on the DCP was Jerry Haven and he lived down in Seal Beach near me at the time. I don't remember the other guys name.  In any cas, if you could trace Jerry down, he would be a wonderful source of information about all versions of the MCP.

[l wilton]

Bob, you are half right and half wrong.

B5500 #101 was in Pasadena. B5500 #102 was in Mission Viejo at the time that the Smithsonian acquired what it thought was the saved 101.

Grace Sturgess, one of the languages programmers at Pasadena, learned the machine was to be scrapped. She figured that it was important enough to be saved, and contacted either or both the ACM and DATAMATION about this, suggesting they try to get it saved. It turned out that they were about two days late to be able to save it, it had been pretty well smashed up and parted out by then. But 102 was still down in MV and wasn't scheduled to be scrapped for a few more weeks. So the techs ended up pulling out 102 and putting the serial number plate on it from 101, and shipping that to the Smithsonian.