building a PDP11 from the things you find at home

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Jerome Fine wrote: Hmmmm, this IS the classiccmp list isn't it? ...and emulators are very, very, boring; and, if run under M$-Windoze, much less reliable and more likely to crash or lose data. The sound of fans, the chatter and kerchunking of disk drives, the clicking contactors when mains power is applied, the vacuum and whirring sounds of a mag tape drive starting up, the blinking of lights, etc. are all parts of the experience of using vintage computer systems. Aye Jerome, surely you don't want to be thought of as an anti-classic-computer emulator loving weenie, do you? ;-) After all, can it not be said that emulators are, for the most part, preferred by weenies who can't lift a PDP-11/44 PSU and are afraid of being shocked by one, who can't pop a tall cabinet into the back of a real, not one of those little foreign match-box size, station station wagons to haul it home, who don't know a screwdriver from an SMD drive cable, or who can't even figure out how to disassemble and reassemble a couple of linked paperclips? -- Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.net 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.net beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.