16 Nov
2006
16 Nov
'06
1:46 p.m.
On Nov 16, 2006, at 11:11 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
That all depends on, I'm assuming, the depth of one's affinity for
the machines, and the kind of person one is. I cut my teeth on a
PDP-11/34 running RSX-11/M (later RSTS/E) in the early 1980s...I used
that machine every day for both serious and recreational tasks. I'm
not even close to losing the taste for that chocolate...I have an
11/34 two feet from me, an 11/83 closer than that, and upwards of a
dozen other PDP-11s under this roof.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL
More than
money, for my collection, I had to sacrifice most of the
space
in my house. Many people would think I'm crazy for collecting
machines
that take up hundreds of square feet each, but for me the
motivation is
to play with the machines I lusted after an *account* on.
Then, it must be like chocolate. Work for Hershey's for a few years
on the line and you probably don't have much of a taste left.
Being in a manufacturer's special systems group, I got all of the
hands-on time that I could possibly want (mostly in the hours between
11PM and 7AM) on big iron. Ever use a Cyber 74 cluster as a
keypunch? Played baseball and other games for hours on the
operator's console on an otherwise idle machine. When I moved into
microporocessors, the same was true, only the hours were better and I
could take a system home with me.
While there were some clever hardware implementations and interesting
programming, I've never developed a desire to even run an emulator
for one of these old systems. Even in the microprocessors I've
accumulated, it's mostly "power them up and see if they'll boot" and
then put them away again or get rid of them. A modern PC can do so
much more and more quickly.