On 1/7/24 17:51, Charles Curley wrote:
On Sun, 7 Jan 2024 20:36:12 +0000
"Andrew M.A. Cater" <amaca...@einval.com> wrote:
Take care, stay warm, well, and unvaxed.
^^^^^^^^^^^
Gene - no partisan opinions, please, as per Code of Conduct?
Oh, come on! Just because Gene doesn't like certain ancient Digital
Equipment products…?
Chuckle. That however, does bring back the memories of the PDP-11/23a
that was supplied by Sci-Atl and CBS to control a 7 meter C-band
satellite dish, to say it was unstable was the understatement of the
century. But it came with a maintenance contract so I let the field
engineers from DE, worry about it, but everytime it crashed, we lost
several thou, because we were selling toothpaste instead of dog food,
and CBS didn't pay us for those mistakes. I grew increasing frustrated
with DE because in the end, they changed every component in that machine
but the frame rail with the seriel number. The computer guy in NYC CBS
HQ finally traded me his test mule figuring he could fix it so we
updated DE's seriel number list and traded machines. But, he couldn't
fix it either, so he then had no test mule to check other stations
boards and software updates. Then it snowballed from there with CBS
finally forced to replace every pdp11-23a at their affiliate sites, with
an I've Been Moved, industrial version pc, and an artic real time
interface card as a control interface. His pdp11-23a Just Worked, as
did the IBM. That of course had a very visible positive effect on our
P&L reports. So yeah, you could say I did not have any great faith in
DEC. Early on but after the warranty on it expired, it used a DEC VT220
for local admin stuff. Nothing fancy but when I called DEC looking for a
HOT for it, was not available but they did have a vt550 they wanted
nearly 6 grand for, and would not guarantee it would work. CBS could
call it up on the phone so they did for about 10 days while I reworked a
vt100 clone that ran on os9, the nix clone for a trs-80 color computer
3, making a 100% compatible vt220 out of it. That worked until the IBM
came in. So here is a guy named Gene, that has never owned a "PC" cuz I
was doing things a pc couldn't, on a color computer, switching to the
Amiga in the 90's, and built my first linux machine, installing RH5.0 on
it in 1998. Built lots of other machines starting with an RCA 1802, but
never a VAX.
Cheers, Gene Heskett.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
