Petticoat 5: the computer for women, by women

[trpmb6]

This is so over the top I am not sure if it is real or fake.

The Petticoat 5

[poxic]

Fortunately, this appears to be Episode 5 of Season 2 of the BBC comedy series, Look Around You.

[trpmb6]

Fortunately, this appears to be Episode 5 of Season 2 of the BBC comedy series, Look Around You.

Thank goodness

[hotaru]

that one's fake, but this one is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell ... n_Computer

[poxic]

I'd facepalm but the force would probably knock my skull clear into next week.

[trpmb6]

So it was basically a 10,000 dollar cook book.

This is what I found most surprising:

The Honeywell 316 also had industrial applications. A 316 was used at Bradwell nuclear power station in Essex as the primary reactor temperature-monitoring computer until summer 2000, when the internal 160k disk failed.

[Thesh]

That doesn't surprise me. People who deal with critical systems tend to be incredibly paranoid about fucking with things that work.

[commodorejohn]

That doesn't surprise me. People who deal with critical systems tend to be incredibly paranoid about fucking with things that work.

Yup. There was a news story making the rounds a few years back about a nuclear plant in Ontario deciding to commit to maintaining its PDP-11 controller system until I think 2050 - they actually made posts on some vintage computer forums and mailing lists looking to recruit maintainers for the software.

And the Honeywell 316 was actually a fairly reasonable 16-bit mini for its time (nothing like the beauty of the -11, but pretty useable all the same) - it's just its incarnation as the infamous "Kitchen Computer" that's baffling and hilarious.

[techblogger911]

Scrolling down from top to bottom had me change a lot of reactions lol

[trpmb6]

That doesn't surprise me. People who deal with critical systems tend to be incredibly paranoid about fucking with things that work.

Not in that they used it for that long. More that the same "computer" they used as an advanced version of a recipe book was also primary 'computer' monitoring the temperature of the reactor.

[hotaru]

Not in that they used it for that long. More that the same "computer" they used as an advanced version of a recipe book was also primary 'computer' monitoring the temperature of the reactor.

it probably worked a lot better for temperature monitoring than for storing recipes with only toggle-switch input and binary-light output.

[poxic]

Because keeping a binder with written or printed recipes is just so difficult...

[commodorejohn]

Because keeping a binder with written or printed recipes is just so difficult...

Careful, poxic. Talk like that in Silicon Valley and you could find yourself tied and dragged behind someone entrepreneur's Tesla.

[hotaru]

Because keeping a binder with written or printed recipes is just so difficult...

apparently it could store "over 1000 recipes". can a binder do that?

[commodorejohn]

I wish there were more technical details available for the thing - because if they had a compression algorithm that could store a thousand complete recipes in 4KB of core, I'd sure like to hear it.

[Soupspoon]

What's betting it couldn't store "over 1024 recipes", though?

[Thesh]

I wish there were more technical details available for the thing - because if they had a compression algorithm that could store a thousand complete recipes in 4KB of core, I'd sure like to hear it.

Recipes have a lot of repetition, so given proper constraints on the recipes and how they are stored, it might be possible. For example, I managed to compress a text file with 1024 identical mac and cheese recipes into a 12KB file. When it comes to marketing, you have a lot of leeway.

[scarletmanuka]

I wish there were more technical details available for the thing - because if they had a compression algorithm that could store a thousand complete recipes in 4KB of core, I'd sure like to hear it.

The Wiki article said in the main part of the entry "Initially released with a capacity of 4096 through 16,384 words of memory, later expansion options allowed increasing memory space to 32,768 words", and noted that the machine had 16-bit words. So we're talking 8KB-32KB (or possibly 64KB) of memory, which is a bit more possible at the higher end (but still unlikely). The whole thing appears to have been a marketing stunt rather than a real product anyway.

No evidence has been found that any Honeywell Kitchen Computers were ever sold.

Gee, I wonder why.

[commodorejohn]

The Wiki article said in the main part of the entry "Initially released with a capacity of 4096 through 16,384 words of memory, later expansion options allowed increasing memory space to 32,768 words", and noted that the machine had 16-bit words. So we're talking 8KB-32KB (or possibly 64KB) of memory, which is a bit more possible at the higher end (but still unlikely).

I think that's referring to the 316 line in general though (Wikipedia doesn't help matters here by combining the two into a single article.) I seriously doubt the Kitchen Computer ever supported additional core stacks (though I'd love to know for sure.)

The whole thing appears to have been a marketing stunt rather than a real product anyway.

This much, anyway, is pretty much objective fact.

[SuicideJunkie]

The detail I find amusing is that the 'kitchen computer' had its best use running what could be viewed as an (atomic) oven.