Retro Computer Laboratory

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====== ENIAC related documents ======

In mid 2014, I began to study the [[wp>ENIAC]] in order to support the [[http://www.hnf.de|Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum]] in Paderborn for their special exposition on women in computing.

Here you will find the papers I prepared that finally resulted in a real-size panel for hands-on experience of the visitors. 

To write down what I had learned about the ENIAC, I first wrote a very technical paper called {{:eniac:eniac-demonstrator.pdf|ENIAC Demonstrator}} (in German). A large part is about example programs and how they were plugged.

The next papers are in German as their target was the actual building process in the Museum. If you would like an English version, drop me a note, please

Next, I proposed three variants of different complexity of a single panel demonstrator: {{:eniac:eniac-funktionsattrappe_v0.1.pdf|}} (in German). The museum decided to build the simplest one, although it was not able to demonstrate the programming method used.

Then, I wrote a short paper concerning the electronic and software design: {{:eniac:eniac-attrappensteuerung.pdf|}} (in German).

Finally, a user's guide was prepared, including more detailled specifications of the software: {{:eniac:eniac-akkuattrappe_anleitung.pdf|}} (in German). If you have a chance to use the machine finally built, you will observer that the software was not exactly built to my specification. Maybe that's the reason it was never made available to the visitors.

Note that these are all the original working papers and thus are uncorrected provided as PDF documents.

As the book //ENIAC in action// by Haigh, Priesterly and Rope (ISBN-13: 978-0262033985) was published when most of the work was done, it has not been used to check the design.