[SML] turning off light boards

Fri Nov 27 22:25:28 UTC 2015

Pretty sure my first computer, a Heathkit H8 kit, was a PDP-8.  Also 
built the H9 terminal, and then added an aftermarket 24-line w/ 
lowercase-characters upgrade.  The biggest thing, though, was expanding 
the original 4K ram to 12K in the H8!

Maybe a little fuzzy about the finer details; I was 11 yo.  Ouch... that 
was 40 years ago.  :(

Jim
RC4

------------------------------
James David Smith
RC4 Wireless / Soundsculpture Incorporated
Office 919-229-9953 | Skype rc4jds

------ Original Message ------
From: "Dan Sheehan via Stagecraft" <stagecraft at theatrical.net>
To: "Stagecraft Mailing List" <stagecraft at theatrical.net>
Cc: "Dan Sheehan" <dsheehan.sml at gmail.com>
Sent: 27-Nov-15 7:37:04 AM
Subject: Re: [SML] turning off light boards

>DEC PDP-8's in GenRad 1790-series board testers.
>12 bits wide, octal notation for 4 3-bit groups.
>Hand-toggled in a few machine code instructions to boot it up.
>
>That was well back in BC
>
>(Before Children)
>
>On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 2:00 AM, Jerry Durand via Stagecraft 
><stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:
>>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
>>
>>
>>____________________________________________________________
>>For list information see <http://stagecraft.theprices.net/>
>>Stagecraft mailing list
>>Stagecraft at theatrical.net
>>http://theatrical.net/mailman/listinfo/stagecraft_theatrical.net
>
>
>
>--
>...Dan Sheehan
>Fixer of things that break
>

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