Colossus v the PC

[Loose rivets]

From the Beeb site on 15th .





Seems hard to believe, but so does the £millions needed to preserve them.




"A virtual Colossus written to run on a Pentium 2 laptop takes about the same time to break a cipher as Colossus does," he said.
It was so fast, he said, because it was a single purpose processor rather than one put to many general purposes like modern desktop computers.

Re-building the pioneering machine took so long because all 10 Colossus machines were broken up after the war in a bid to keep their workings secret. When he started the re-build all Mr Sale had to work with was a few photographs of the machine.

[henry crun]

I wonder where they found enough valves for Colossus, arn't they as scarce as hens teeth now ?

[frostbite]

I believe the Chinese are quite active in valve manufacture.

[HuntandFish]

I thought Colossus was originally built from BT bits . Perhaps they still use them which could explain why my ADSL is so slow

[Loose rivets]

I try to avoid pasting in large links, but this is the Beeb's free promulgated item.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7094881.stm

[IO540]

I saw the project at Bletchley in 2005.

The GCHQ had imposed conditions like the machine had to be behind a glass screen so the public could not get close to it, and a small section of it was still banned by GCHQ from being constructed although they were hoping to get permission at any time.

It suprises me this stuff is still secret, after everything about cracking the Enigma etc that has come into the public domain after the initial revelations c. 1980. One book I read (West?) was particularly detailed in the description of the methods.

I guess the builders of the current machine had to be sworn to secrecy. Looking at Tony Sale's website (http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/index.htm)he may have been banned due to this.

Valves are not a problem. The Russians for example make loads of valves. A lot of them go into high-end "hi fi" gear - the Russians must be laughing all the way to the bank flogging bits of glass (with gold plated bases of course) at £20 a time to the stupid Westerners who think they give superior sound.

[Loose rivets]

Ha ha! stand by for incoming.


As I'v mentioned before, some, if not all, flight simulators are run without an operating system. I recall a guy on television explaining that there was no time to refer to a system.

I wonder if there are any clever gizmos that are so clever that they still want to keep them secret.

[Jhieminga]

Some confirmation of the technical gubbins here (http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/lorenz/rebuild.htm).

I note from this link (http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/lorenz/colwalk/colossus.htm) that it says:

The final connection and commissioning of the extra circuits await Tony Sale being allowed access to his rebuild by the Bletchley Park Trust which has banned him from Bletchley Park as from September 2000.

What happened?? :confused:
I don't know the details but I do know that he's been back at Bletchley for a while now. It is in this part of the rebuild story: http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/lorenz/mk2.htm