11 Mar
2011
11 Mar
'11
3:46 p.m.
On 2011 Mar 11, at 3:19 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 3/11/11 6:09 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
The switch and light patterns certainly do, but the silk screen around
them looks unique.
http://www.retrotechnology.com/pdp11/front_panel.jpg
Yes, a proprietary silk-screened bezel over a standard 11/20 front
panel, as has been done with lots of PDP-8 and PDP-11 systems.
I figured somebody here would recognise it more quickly than if I went
looking for -11 front panel photos. While many -11s were used in
embedded systems, I don't think I had seen one where they were actually
trying to hide the fact by silk-screening new front panels.
Too bad in a way, about the Fox-1, just because it looked like a pretty
cool mini (X-shaped cabinet design).
I still find that era interesting, when everybody and their dog just
had to design and manufacture their own minicomputer, and then
discovered that supporting hardware, IO interfaces and devices, plus a
full range of software was a bit much.
I extracted a couple of photos from the Fox-2 doc at
the
archive.computerhistory.org:
http://www3.telus.net/~bhilpert/tmp/foxboro/
So for PDP-11 experts, could the machine in the photos be a
rebadged/OEM
PDP-11 ca. 1972 ?
That looks exactly like a PDP-11/20 front panel. 