At age 34 I am probably one of the youngest to actually have used at least one (most likely two or three) of the machines you guys have been talking about. Back when I was a kid my dad worked on PDP's and a number of different DEC systems (I know I keyed around on the PDP11, and had a set of OS manuals for the 11/760 and MicroVax) and then later managed the computer services division of the company before it got taken over and hacked up and sold off.
I remember going into work with him one weekend while he was trying to get the tv faceplate inspection system he was working on done, and to keep me busy he gave me the usr/pwd for a graphics terminal and then the following week I stayed home 'sick' and logged in via the old 300 baud modem (which of course he had scratch built in a rat-shack enclosure hooked to the TRS-80 clone we had at home) and much to my SURPRISE I got a message on the terminal "who goes there?!?!" at which point I quickly shut down the modem and the computer. To this day I can remember that user and password combination. That got me learning about server administration at a young age... :) I still remember those drives and their massive platters - made me think of washing machines. My daughter just laughs when we tell her that the little MP3 player that fits in her pocket to play some music used to take up whole floors of buildings and needed A/C systems that rival some minor league hockey arenas. It was a real treat when I brought home the pre-project investigation photos from the architectural firm I work for now to show my dad the building he used to work in before it got remodeled (actually gutted to the columns) as a university Engineering College. We both remembered the place as it was back when I was a mini-geek. Ah to reminisce... Greg www.distinctperspectives.com -----Original Message----- From: Stuart Stevenson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009 1:01 AM To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) Subject: Re: [Emc-users] OT: PDP11 I ran a long process and post on MicroVAX. The geometry was very complex. The hard drive was a large 51mb. I think it had 8meg memory. I broke my file into about 50 sections. I had to write a script to process the file, collect the log, erase the .pr file, post the file, erase the .cl and .pr1 files, write the log and .pu1 (the gcode file) to a tk50, erase the log and .pu1 files and start on the next section. It took all weekend to complete (about 36 hours). This same file will process and post in less than 1 minute today. The resulting gcode file was 1/4 of the total cuts. I had to rotate and repeat to cut the part. On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 11:02 PM, Jon Elson <[email protected]> wrote: > Kent A. Reed wrote: >> Stuart and Jon: >> >> You got me with your talk of PDP11 memory tests and "insanely complex >> systems with PDP-11s with hundreds of ISR addresses"...I was immediately >> transported back to the 1970s. I still have the tactile memory of keying >> in the bootstrap loader from the front panel, over and over and over, as >> we debugged our laboratory control programs, and keying in our patches >> because it was too time consuming to reassemble and link code in our >> "high speed" punched papertape environment. I have also worked with >> PDP8s, HP2100s, DG Novas, and even Interdata minis, but I loved the >> PDP11 the most. >> >> I know some lucky folks have original PDP11 front panels. I was too >> young to think to salvage mine when the relay racks were forklifted out >> of the lab. >> >> Those were the days! >> > Yeah, they were! I remember one time on an RSX-11M system, having to > read a disk block into memory via front panel, altering what file it > pointed to, and writing it back with great trepidation. It worked! I > also remember doing an RSX-11M sysgen in the middle of the night, and > doing some other maintenance while it was running. Of course, I knew to > NEVER pull out more than one of the Calcomp 40 MB 5-platter drives at a > time. But, I was working in BACK of the rack, and pushed out more than > one to get to the wiring, and the whole rack fell over, with 3 drives > spinning! I was about to throw myself off the roof! I powered the CPU > off while it was running, and then spun the drives down. I knew not to > power the drives down as gravity would drop the heads back into the pack > in that 45 degree nose-down attitiude. One of the other guys had been > fixing his car that weekend, and left an auto scissors jack there. I got > the car jack under one of the drives, and started cranking. Slowly it > lifted up, and eventually I was able to ease the whole rack gently back > to vertical, using the drives as a counterbalance to keep it from flying > back to upright. I pulled the disk packs and examined them for horrible > damage, then took a peek at the disk heads, and found nothing wrong. I > eventually put the packs back in, spun them up, then turned the CPU (PDP > 11/45) back on, and watched to my amazement as it continued the sysgen > from where it had been interrupted. The next day, some of the people at > work were wondering what that BIG dent in the top of the Tektronix > storage-tube terminal was, and I had to explain! > > Another war story was the time our VAX 11/780 was going to be used for a > huge finite element analysis run on a building's structure over the > weekend. It had all of 512 KB of memory! Well, right about 4:30 PM > Friday afternoon, it crashes! After some diagnosing, we discover one > memory board is kaput. I pulled the board, and told them it might still > run their analysis, but to be extremely careful about having a minimum > number of users logged on, and just let it run unmolested. They got it > done by early Monday morning, with just 256 KB of memory! > > Well, enough off-topic war stories! > > Jon > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
