[SML] turning off light boards

[Jerry Durand]

In the late 1970s I ran a couple of PDP 11 systems to control
semiconductor testing in a pilot line.  I still have the hard disk from
the first IBM 286 sold out here sitting on my shelf next to the
prototype for the first mass-produced computer voice board.

Ah, history.  That and $12.95 might buy me a soda.

On 11/26/2015 10:49 PM, Steven Santos via Stagecraft wrote:
> I used a PDP-11 in high school back in the early 1990's.  One of my
> after school jobs at the time was assisting a friends father
> installing and maintaining Digital Alpha and Sun Solaris servers, as
> well as the workstations that went with them.  Had one client that had
> 3 PDP-11's (a 55, a 65 and a 70 IIRC), 2 racks of Sun servers (6ish)
> and  and 8(!) digital alpha servers (2100 series I believe it was) and
> a home-brewed box they called "big bertha" that had a ton of hard
> drives in it and wired to it.  No one ever told me what these guys
> did, but we spent a LOT of time making network authentication work
> right.  The PDP-11's did not want to work with Sun's network
> authentication.  Neither did the Windows for Workgroups (3.11)
> machines want to do it.
>
> I still remember being blown away that an office of 12 would have this
> many servers running, and that each of these guys had a bleeding edge
> W4W 386, a DEC term and a Solaris box (with 2 screens!) sitting on
> each desk.  My whole school had 1 pdp-11 that powered 2 classrooms of
> workstations, plus the school admin terminals.
>
> Now my phone has more computing power than that whole office did.
> ---
> Steven Santos
> Director
> Simply Circus, Inc.
> 86 Los Angeles Street
> Newton, MA 02458
>
> P: 617-527-0667
> F: 617-934-1870
> E: Steven at SimplyCircus.com
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 4:23 PM, Kristi R-C via Stagecraft
> <stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:
>> DEC made tanks. I used to program on a PDP 11/70. I think you could have bombed it and it would have been fine.
>>
>> Kristi R-C
>>
>>> On Nov 26, 2015, at 12:32 PM, Chip Wood via Stagecraft <stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Did that in '75 when NSA retired their PDP-1 (Serial # 1) for a PDP-10 back when core was core and NSA was only a little paranoid.  Ran a million cycles of random data thru it and they said that wasn't enough. So we yanked it and put it on a shelf.  That thing could still be there after 40 years.
>>>
>>> Chip 1
>>>
>>>> On 11/24/2015 8:41 AM, Alf Sauve' via Stagecraft wrote:
>>>>> On 11/23/2015 10:36 PM, Richard John Archer via Stagecraft wrote:
>>>>> volatile core memories
>>>> Never heard of "volatile" core memory.   One of the advantages, possible the only one, of 'core" memory was that it was not volatile.  It actually was a real pain if you were trying to scrub it clean of classified data.     Been there. done that.
>>>
>>> ____________________________________________________________
>>> For list information see <http://stagecraft.theprices.net/>
>>> Stagecraft mailing list
>>> Stagecraft at theatrical.net
>>> http://theatrical.net/mailman/listinfo/stagecraft_theatrical.net
>> ____________________________________________________________
>> For list information see <http://stagecraft.theprices.net/>
>> Stagecraft mailing list
>> Stagecraft at theatrical.net
>> http://theatrical.net/mailman/listinfo/stagecraft_theatrical.net
>>
> ____________________________________________________________
> For list information see <http://stagecraft.theprices.net/>
> Stagecraft mailing list
> Stagecraft at theatrical.net
> http://theatrical.net/mailman/listinfo/stagecraft_theatrical.net

-- 
Jerry Durand, Durand Interstellar, Inc.  www.interstellar.com
tel: +1 408 356-3886, USA toll free: 1 866 356-3886