Retrochallenge, 2005

On 6/14/05, Ronald Wayne <appleto at gmail.com> wrote: Not necessarily a lynch mob, but many 1982/1983 models of PDP-11 are somewhat easy to get UNIX running on (presuming one has enough disk). It's "kinda" cheating, though, because if I were going to pick, say, an 11/23 with 4MB of memory, and a few dozen megabytes of disk (one RL02 doesn't really give enough space), we are talking several thousand dollars of hardware in 1982, vs a couple thousand for, say, a reasonably tricked-out Apple II with no hard disk. In fact, I would probably say $8K-new worth of PDP-11 equipment (now eBaying for far less) would be good enough for a reasonably modern textual daily life. Part of the scaling problem is that PDP-11s came from C-64 sized (LSI-11) up to full server size (11/70), with a similarly scaling price tag. Now... as a hobbyist in 1982, I couldn't afford -11 equipment at home (it came later, c. 1986), but I _could_ afford PDP-8 equipment. The difference, though, is that a PDP-8 w/OS/8 could go online with, say, Kermit, OS/8 is more of an RT-11 or CP/M-kind of an experience (no accident, since they both trace themselves back to OS/8). I love my PDP-8s, but like going back to an 8-bit platform of any kind, I'd take a hit in terms of what I do every day if the -8 was my daily drive (of course, the terminal it's attached to would work great hooked up directly to a modem...) So I'm not really sure if an -8 deserves a multipler of 3, or more than 3... certainly not less, and certainly no less than a CP/M machine. -ethan