Presentations & Demonstrations

Kevin Murrell

Director & Trustee of the National Museum of Computing

Kevin specialises in post-1945 computer history and is also Secretary of the Computer Conservation Society (a specialist group of the British Computer Society).

He has kindly agreed to talk about the work at the National Museum of Computing and the Computer Conservation Society preserving and restoring DEC hardware. Kevin will present a couple of videos demonstrating some of their 'less portable' DEC equipment, including the Blacknest PDP/11 used for seismic monitoring and  IRIS Air Traffic Control system.

Colin Butcher

Director, XDelta Systems and OpenVMS Ambassador

Colin has been responsible for the architectural design, implementation and trouble-shooting of several major systems, including satellite control, air traffic monitoring, manufacturing, retail and healthcare infrastructures.

Colin is a well-known presenter of both technical and leadership seminars for various organisations, such as the BCS, the UKCMG and the world-wide HP user community (HPUG, Connect, etc.).

Colin has kindly agreed to present technical details of the new OpenVMS 8.4 release (including Clustering over IP/DECnet over IP, performance enhancements etc.) as well as demonstrate how to install VMS, cluster systems or any other topic which is of suitable interest.

Dave Goodwin

PhD Student, Birkbeck College, University of London

Dave is studying for a PhD "Digital Equipment, its Rise and Fall" answering the research question whether the sale to Compaq was necessary or could it have survived on its own with the technology it had. He has kindly agreed to make a presentation on his research.

Ian King & Rich Alderson

Living Computer Museum

Ian & Rich are joining us from the USA and giving a presentation on the restoration of the DEC machines in their collection. These include a PDP-10 model 2065 running Tops-10, a TOAD-1 running TOPS-20 and a VAX-11/780-5 running OpenVMS 6.2.

Derek Holloway

Owner, Holloway Computer Products

Holloway Computer Products supplies VT series terminals and keyboards to the UK market. Derek has kindly agreed to do a short talk on his life with VT series terminals and LK series keyboards.

Rob Jarratt

DEC Hardware Enthusiast

Rob will be demonstrating the work he has done with SIMH in simulating the DMC-11 device that allows DECnet to be tunnelled over IP. He also simulates a PDP-10 (36-bit) running TOPS-20 under SIMH.

Jim Austin

Professor of Neural Computing, University of York, The Jim Austin Computer Collection

Jim's agreed to bring something interesting to demonstrate from his extensive collection of DEC related hardware. Jim will talk about the DEC machines in his collection, now over 60 machines, and how it could do with sorting out!'

Stephen 'Hoff' Hoffman

The founder of HoffmanLabs, Stephen Hoffman (“Hoff”), is a published author, a regular presenter at OpenVMS-related events, seminars and technical update days around the world, contributed to the OpenVMS.org podcasts, and has worked directly with OpenVMS for well over twenty years. In some areas of OpenVMS, Hoff has written the OpenVMS code itself.

Hoff will be 'yakking about old-time DEC'

Mark Wickens

Event Organiser, DEC Hardware Enthusiast, Ex-VMS Contractor

I'll be providing various applications such as ALLIN1, DEC Decision, DECtalk, DECwrite, VAX APL, VAX Flight to have a play with that I have uncovered in my explorations of the VAX SPL and DECUS archives as well as giving a talk on my entries to the Retrochallenge Competition that have centred around VAX Macro programming, VAX C programming, using only a VAX for a month and creating a website using ALLIN1 automagically.