Prestel At The Science Museum

[Ant]

This is interesting.. apparently there's a fully working Prestel terminal/demonstration at the London Science Museum - still there and working, pictured as recently as last month!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/teflon/4309568949/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackbeltjones/76403879/

Wonder if they'd let anyone download the database.

[irrelevant]

Hmm. yes, I'd seen that - many years ago!!  I'm surprised it's still there.

I wonder what they are running it on...

Is the science museum a public institution? (I'm thinking FoI here..)

[irrelevant]

Ah .. they are.  Excellent .. :evil:

Drat.. must add that <evil grin> smiley ...

[irrelevant]

Request sent

[irrelevant]

Little more digging..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/practise/3104354/
That looks like a Microvitec CUB. What I can't find a photo of is the keyboard or keypad used to operate it.   And the display - not showing the bottom half of one of the double-height lines, means it's definitely not a proper Prestel terminal.  Given that, that it's a CUB, and noting the font being used, it looks suspiciously like there's a BBC Micro hiding somewhere...

The pages don't seem to have the frame letter on the end, so it's not a normal viewdata server...  But, it would be fascinating to get a copy,.  Let's see what they say :-)

[Ant]

Subtle differences as you point out. The 'GOOD DAY' on the Welcome page replaces what I seem to remember were 'GOOD MORNING', 'GOOD AFTERNOON', 'GOOD EVENING' when logging in to a live Prestel machine.

Perhaps a BBC Micro with some discs or two. Or three. Or more. Or a 'Winchester'. Then again, those would surely have worn out by now - from what other people have said the exhibit has been around since 1985, so for it to still be going after 25 years of (presumably) constant daily use by the public.. Then again, perhaps they just replace it every so often. It probably wouldn't be that hard to do, after all.

[irrelevant]

After a bit of correspondence the status of the Prestel demo at the Science Museum  can be summarised as:

• It isn't live (duh!)
• It's not an inventoried item, i.e. it's not something they are "keeping", just something put together to demo something else..
• BT supplied it, so they don't formally have anything technical about it
• The Gallery Maintenance team might have some more data, so that's going to be checked up on.

I have requested, and the person I have been corresponding with agrees, that the exhibit should be "acquired" so it can be preserved.   They seem to have agreed in principle to my having a copy of the pages, but are not sure if anybody will know how to do it - I've offered my help.  I'm also waiting to see what comes out of Maintenance.

Thanks for the heads up, Ant.  I remember playing with this about 20 years ago, and it looks like they had basically forgotten they had it, and it's been only good luck that it still exists.  Hopefully, now they are aware, and realise that the service it demos no longer exists, it'll get preserved properly.

[Ant]

Excellent news! 

[Peter L Jones]

This is really excellent.  Nice work Rob!

[broadcaststorm]

Hi all,
I picked up on this topic from stairwaytohell (or a link from Rob's post anyway), but here's a picture I took in April last year.
Sorry about the flash, the room was very dark!

[Peter L Jones]

I always though Microvitec Cub monitors looked like they would last forever...

[irrelevant]

Still working on getting it copied ...   Had an invite down to discuss things...