9 Mar
2007
9 Mar
'07
6:25 p.m.
> Someone (Jules? broken attribution?) wrote:
> I feel the need to ask - what is it that makes DEC stuff so popular
> and collectible, versus other machines of the same time period?
>
> So... why? More of a community? Better documentation? Better hardware
> or software availability? What do collectors *do* with their running
> DEC systems anyway?
Familiarity - for me, as well as many members of this list, it's a
matter of accumulated experience on DEC boxes when they were new or
recently retired.
I can only speak to my own reasons. It really comes
down to 2 issues.
When I started collecting DEC hardware it was pretty cheap on the
surplus market. My 11/05 cost $50.00
US and was runnable. Another $150 and I had a pair of RX01's. The most
expensive part was RAM.
Nice start. As I've posted in the past, my start with DEC hardware
was a $35 PDP-8/L in 1982 from the Dayton Hamvention. It took me 2
years of fiddling around with it until I ran across a copy of the
module list and got it working. From there, it was to a PDP-8/a to
which I added an RX8E/RX01 then an RL8A and RL01 and a VT52.
Coincident with the PDP-8/a, I was using PDP-11s and VAXen at work, so
I was pretty well established as a DEChead between High School and my
Freshman year of College. I never got paid to program a PDP-8, but
I'm happy I barely made the cutoff to program the PDP-11 for a living
(1986-1987).
Besides early access to the hardware, I'd say the appeal was how much
cooler 12-bits and 16-bits and 32-bits was compared to my little 6502
and 1802 machines were at home. I could write "real" programs on a
minicomputer at work or poke around with noddy stuff in BASIC and 6502
assembler at home. No contest. It didn't hurt that while I was
learning PDP-11 machine language at work (typing in diagnostics with
console ODT emulators), I was also working on Unibus and Qbus
hardware. I got to learn all the low-level stuff _and_ get a paycheck
for it. I never saw an HP or Data General in the flesh until several
years after I was repairing PDP-11 boards and writing programs in
MACRO and C. Speaking of C, I learned it on an 11/750 running 4BSD in
1985. A venerable platform if ever there was one (back in the days of
"all the world's a VAX"). I learned the One True Brace formatting
standard in that environment and retain that style to this day.
So... in short - early exposure and access, then the chance to pick up
older stuff on the surplus market for cheap or free. When nobody
wanted 5MB RL01s, I was buying cheap RL01s. Later it was RL02s, then
it was entire MicroVAXen, etc. So much of it was backwards and
forwards compatible, I could play with what I could afford at home,
then take my results to work and run stuff on really expensive iron
($100K+).
Shame it's all so hard to find now.
-ethan