Hello! If you’re still here reading this blog, I’m impressed. We haven’t posted anything of note for some years now and frankly, thats because we haven’t done anything of note with the project. The machines have been sitting in their home, virtually untouched, for 4 years now. Chris & I (Adam) are just too busy with our respective professional and personal lives to give them a second look, and we’ve come to the difficult decision that it’s time to look at letting the systems go.
When we originally moved the systems to Creslow, part of our agreement was to provide PR visibility for the services offered by ecom. Whilst this initially obviously garnered some visibility, our lack of progress with the project has obviously had the knock on effect of stalling this effort as well. Our landlords have been exceptionally gracious about this, however we are now at a point where we either need to really invest time in the project to build this quid-pro-quo relationship, or we need to invest a fairly significant amount of cash in rent to cover the lack of visibility. We’ve discussed it at length, and we think that it’s very unlikely that either Chris or I will have time in the next 10-15 years to focus on this, so it’s time to look at other options.
We are therefore inviting proposals or offers focused around one of the following core ideas:
- A museum or preservation organisation takes the machines on permanent loan or possibly as a donation depending upon exactly what the terms look like
- A private entity takes the machines on loan for display for a fix period
- A foreign museum takes the machines, with negotiation around coverage of costs
- A private collector purchases the machines from us for a sum to be negotiated at the time
If you have an alternate proposal we would also be open to hearing it.
We have three main systems in the collection, as detailed below:
Red IBM 360 Model 20 System
1 x IBM 360 Model 20 CPU in Red
1x 2203 System Printer
2x 2311 Disk Drives
1x 2152 System Console (possibly the last remaining example of this in the world, though in poor condition)
1x 2560 Punched Card Reader/Punch/Sorter
1x 2501 Punched Card Reader
2x 2415 II Tape Drives (One master, one slave) (Possibly only remaining examples of this model globally)
25x IBM Disc Packs
Blue IBM 360 Model 20 System
1 x IBM 360 Model 20 CPU in Blue
1x 2501 Punched Card Reader
1x 1403 Printer
System 370/125
1x 370/125 CPU – Unknown condition
1x 3504 Punched card reader (incomplete)
Miscellaneous
1x 029 Card Punch
1x 5471 System Console
Assorted other spares and unknown/incomplete components
Around 12 full boxes of brand new IBM punched cards
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In an ideal world we would like to see everything go together, but we understand that this is an enormous amount of kit and that might not be possible. We are not will to split up individual systems, but we are willing to split things by the groupings above. For instance if there was interest in only the red system due to its complete set of peripherals, we would be willing to negotiate on that basis.
It is extremely rare that systems such as this become available, and these are two of only a handful of privately held IBM 360’s in the world.
If you have an idea or a proposal, please email me on the following address. Please do NOT email me to suggest I contact X museum unless you are a representative of that museum or hold a direct relationship with them and know they are interested:
We are genuinely sad that we’ve been unable to work on this project and take it where we wanted it to go. We set out with strong intentions, but alas, as is often the case life took over and we were unable to push forward in the way we wanted to. We hope that someone comes along who will be able to keep the systems safe for future generations.
