Redditor discovers legendary 1956 computer in grandparents’ basement

c-wizz announced on Monday that they had found a 66-year-old computer in their grandparents' basement. The computer used by "Mel" in a famous piece of hacker lore is one of only 45 computers manufactured in Europe.

The "librascope general purpose 30" was originally priced at $47,000 and weighed in at 800 pounds. People considered it a small computer because of its desk-like size. 4,069 words can be stored in the rotating magnetic drum memory, which is equivalent to about one.

A Flexowriter typewriter-style console and a paper tape reader were found along with the main unit. There were a few machines nearby. c-wizz wrote in a comment that there seemed to be more modules belonging to thePDP. There is a 19-inch rack that is supposed to hold everything. I might be able to find some manual and put it all together.

The most interesting part of the basement discovery is the LGP 30 which is part of hacker legend. " The Story of Mel" was posted to a Usenet newsgroup in 1983 and tells the story of a man named Mel. The author of the story is later tasked with finding a bug in the software and discovers Kaye's ingenious and unconventional programming tricks. The "butterfly effect" is said to have been created by Edward Lorenz as a result of weather experiments.

What was happening in the grandparents basement? Ars reached out to c-wizz but did not hear back. c-wizz wrote that his grandfather used it for civil engineering calculations in the 60s and that he was one of only a few people in the country that owned such a computer.

There might be a relationship between the unit found nearby and the one used by the grandparents. c-wizz wrote, "There seem to be some instructions on how to transfer code written for the LGP 30 to thePDP8e."

After sitting in a basement for a long time, the LGP 30 will need significant work to get running again. c-wizz is looking into the possibility of a computer museum coming in that location. It would be great if someone could get this thing operational again. There is a museum in Germany where I'm from that has a working LGP 30. I believe I will reach out to them.