A functional description of the TX-0 computer (1958) [pdf]

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31 pointstwoodfin3 comments

Arrival of this computer at MIT is a pivotal moment in the story told in Steven Levy’s “Hackers”.

Student hackers who had been fascinated by activities such as model railroad control equipment turn their attention to a digital computer for the first time. “Spacewar” comes only a couple of years later.

Numbering things starting at zero was practically unheard of at the time. It would have implied, instead, that the TX unit was lacking something other TX units had. I wonder what...

They wanted to build a TX-1 at first but it was too ambitious, so they built the very minimal TX-0 instead and later the much bigger TX-2. Unfortunately there are no documents on the TX-1 ideas available online. There's hardly any documents on the TX-0 even. I'd love to see the schematics :(

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