Christophe Ponsard

First generation computers emerged during WW2 and developed in the 1950s and were based on quite different from the present technology: vaccum tubes/germanium diodes for processing and delay lines for memory. Running those ancestors is extremely difficult given the few examplaries left, their delicate technology and the lost expertise. However at a logical level, their architecture is not so different of our current computers as theses ancestors quickly adhered to the then emerging Von Neumann architecture. This allow us to understand their behaviour on programs through emulating their instruction set and memory structure. This talk presents this process applied by the NAM-IP computer museum to revive the memory of the GAMMA 3, the first french computer build and sold by Bull between 1952 and 1962.

After describing the machine structure and some existing emulators (assembly/javascript from ACONIT), we show how to progressively build a JAVA implementation by following the actual machine evolution from a core machine centered on an ALU operating on 7 decimal words and a 64 instruction panel to an enriched instruction set supporting a binary computation mode and external memories, including a magnetic drum of about 100KB. We then demonstrate the result on a few business programs recovered from that era. The talk also reminds about key concepts, the electromecanical context and how the transition proceeded to computers.

The history of calculation, information processing and computation is very rich. It is driving the industrial revolution and digital transformation of our world. This history is composed of many events related to conceptual and technological breakthroughs. In order to help in the analysis (by researchers) and explanation (to citizens), the NAM-IP Computer Museum is actively developing the "Trajectware" Open Source framework based on a the structuration of illustrated events in the form of timeline fragments that can be explored using various navigation operations to focus on specific periods, aspects (technological, conceptual, cultural, contextual,...) or the involved people/organisations.

This talk is intended to everyone. It will first present the global design based on (1) a knowledge base back-end inspired by different ontology standards (SEM, DOLCE/Spatial History Ontology, Constructed Past Theory, DBPedia) and accessed through queries and/or a specific API to extract a relevant timeline, and (2) a navigation front-end, currently based on ReactNative. Different timeline navigation features will be illustrated on a concrete application case: the "micro-computer, meg@ revolution" exhibition of the NAM-IP museum.

Through our presentation, we hope to trigger interesting discussion about our current work and to gather suggestions and interests to grow this project !

Scan2Run focuses on the digital preservation of computer heritage distributed in paper form (e.g. old magasines with BASIC programs). It may be the only available format Transforming such a listing in a running computer programs and sharing the experience requires quite a few steps: retyping the program, loading it into a vintage computer or emulator, and capturing some results either in textual, image or even video format. Our talk will illustrate our current approach and progress with a toolchain developed for the NAM-IP Computer Museum to help automating the scan of old listing (including learning and reusing profiles), then injecting the result into an emulator with MAME as primary target. Our talk will be illustrated with examples from the widespread Amstrad CPC and rare DAI In-DATA Imagination Machine. It will also be the opportunity to revive and illustrate some capabilities of those nice machines !

More technically, the scan2run project (available from github) supports * OCR with interactive learning phase, forked from JavaOCR, a ligthweight OCR engine * Lua scripts for MAME injection either on a by line or character per frame basis (depending on what the machine can accept as input) * complementary use of screen/video capture and post-processing Open Source tools for documentation and dissemination purposes (Gimp, OBS, OpenShot...)

Software emulators are wonderful tools to study old computer systems for different purpose from running legacy application to retrogaming. This talk explores the context of digital preservation triggered by on-going work in a Belgian computer museum where emulators help in rediscovering old systems, maintaining/recovering knowledge on their design and sharing the experience with the audience without stressing fragile old machines. This talk aims at exploring and somehow engaging the audience about some simple questions from that perspective: where to look for emulators (MAME/MESS, specific development, javascript ports...) ? How to select one for some usage context ? And last but not least as emulators are themselves part of history: How to make sure/contribute to the sustainability of those nice piece of software on the long run ?

The talk will not provide definitive answers to the above questions but document some guidelines gathered so far from different perspectives: usage, architecture, exchange between emulated/physical word, open/closed approaches, community aspects... based on the speaker experience as user of emulators personally and at the NAM-IP computer museum but also as software engineer experienced in evaluting software maintainability, especially open source projects. It will be illustated on a practical case from the museum: the DAI "Imagination Machine" microcomputer. The ultimate long term goal could be to build a knowledge base shared across the community developping and using emulators.