> From: Alan Perry
> a chance to see and touch something that I haven't seen in decades
> that was once a big part of my life.
I know exactly what you mean. PDP-11's were a huge part of my professional
life:
-11/20: the first computer I actually used, in high school
-11/45: the computer on which I took my first programming course in
the CS Dept (amazingly, my group later traded the next computer
for that very computer, years later)
-11/40: the first computer that was 'mine', in the sense that I
controlled it
-11/70: the computer I did a lot of my early Unix learning/work on
-11/03: my first packet switch code ran on one of these
-11/23: the most widespread machine that my early packet switches ran
on
-11/73: the timesharing machine at the company that productized my
packet switch code
I'm very fortunate to now have a lot of PDP-11's in my collection.
(Including an /04 and a /34, machines I never used BITD.) I had no contact
with PDP-11's for many years, but only a few years ago someone here gave
me an -11/84 (if I drove to Wisconsin to get it :-); I stopped off at my
in-law's house to overnight on the way back with it, and they later told
my wife it was the happiest they'd ever seen me!
Noel
