9 Mar
2007
9 Mar
'07
8:04 p.m.
Brian L. Stuart wrote:
- Availability: While we'd all love to get our
hands on a straight-8
or a PDP-7, there are certainly a number of models that are
quite plentiful. So newcomers to the hobby can get their feet
wet with with something outside the 8-bit world pretty easily.
- Available software: Partly because of the availiability of the
hardware, there's a lot of software out there. So when you
get one up and running, you generally can do more than look
at the blinkin' lights (though that's worthwhile in itself--much
more soothing that a lot of other things).
But is that really so ... More I find about DEC is the layered software
that is still under commercial licence even if the real hardware has cummbled
to a powder and blown away in the wind.
Most of the problem with running anything is that before the AT, computers
had such small memory space that there is nothing useful that can be run
anymore. The only advantage of small systems is that you can feel and see them
run, a box with a PANDA display may run a lot faster, but it DON'T have the
feel of a REAL 10.