‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

KICKI: a DECsystem1060

33 points · 6 comments · rbanffy

Loading the complete thread in the background. This saved snapshot is available now. Refresh

  1. breput · · focus · HN ↗
    The site is currently available - mirror at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20260925221311&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;icm.museum&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=207" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20260925221311&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;icm.museu...
  2. DonHopkins · · focus · HN ↗
    Nice to see they let MIT-MC outside to run in the sun. Free range mainframes are the happiest mainframes.

    <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;icm.museum&#x2F;blog&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2025&#x2F;06&#x2F;IMG_4422-Large.jpeg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;icm.museum&#x2F;blog&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2025&#x2F;06&#x2F;IMG_4422-...

    <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;icm.museum&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=38" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;icm.museum&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=38

  3. ozymandiax · · focus · HN ↗
    Incredible project! It would be amazing to have this machine up and running, I never thought that would even be possible. I wonder about your electricity bills though :-)
  4. mzi · · focus · HN ↗
    That&#x27;s Peter&#x27;s old machine! Used to be in the care of Stacken, the computer club at Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. It&#x27;s named Kicki because of the dual CPUs (KI KI). She had a sister named Katia (&quot;a ten&quot; in Swedish is &quot;tia&quot; and she had a KA CPU).

    According to DEC you could only run one KI CPU, and then changed that when challenged to MAX two CPUs. So briefly she ran with three.

    1. Pinus · · focus · HN ↗
      I remember seeing this machine (or one like it, but how many dual-processor pdp-10’s can there have been?) at Stacken sometime around the mid-90’s. Even then, it was a relic from a bygone era. Strange to think that the computers that were brand new then are now older than this was at the time. Damn, I’m getting old…
  5. johnlorentzson · · focus · HN ↗
    It&#x27;s great to see Stacken&#x27;s old machine being taken care of and tinkered with, I&#x27;m sure some of our older members will be thrilled to see this. For the past 20 years we sadly haven&#x27;t had space for minicomputers or mainframes, though for a while we were planning to run an emulated PDP-10 with ITS or something (project on hold due both to the emulated system&#x27;s clock drifting dramatically and the VT220 I was using spontaneously breaking very subtly: key commands don&#x27;t transmit anything, but everything else works). I&#x27;m too young to have used any of these machines myself for anything approaching real work, but I can&#x27;t help but be fascinated by them.
Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.