[SML] turning off light boards

Fri Nov 27 23:39:19 UTC 2015

Yeah... 8080-based box does sound right.  Probably my kid-geek mentality at
the time concluded that since Heathkit had the H8 and the H11, they must be
the same as the PDP-8 and the PDP-11.  I see kids making similar
assumptions today about all sorts of things...

On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 6:33 PM Dave Tosti-Lane <davetostilane at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I think the H8 was an Intel 8080 based box.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit_H8
>
> My recollection is that the PDP series computers were built on multiple
> flip cards rather than based on microcomputer chips like the 8080. The
> PDP-8, at least the original one was about the size of a small refrigerator.
>
> Of course, as you say, there are a lot of years of data overload in the
> wetware between then and now!
>
> Dave Tosti-Lane
>
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 2:25 PM, James D Smith, RC4 Wireless via
> Stagecraft <stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:
>
>> 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
>> <http://www.theatrewireless.com/>
>> 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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