Fred Cisin wrote:
I would
suggest, somewhat facetiously, one small enhancement for a
future version: a small speaker with the ability to play a soundtrack
synchronised to the various commands. The eerie silence of SDs is
unnerving compared with the original cacophony of sounds that come
from old drives.
Emulation, or substitution of modern systems, somehow needs to be able to
include the noise, vibration, and smells.
Absolutely!! My single biggest complaint with Ersatz-11 is that
RT-11 runs more than 100 times as fast as a DEC PDP-11/93!
Seriously, while I can understand to some extent that the hardware
addicts on this list want to pretend the hardware is identical in
ALL respects at least some of the time, as a software addict
(specifically RT-11 on the PDP-11 if anyone has managed
to forget), I am probably at least 2 to 3 times more efficient
with all the extra resources that Ersatz-11 provides on even
10 year old hardware. Using current PC hardware, no real DEC
PDP-11 hardware can possibly match the available resources,
especially the CPU speed, I/O speed and emulated disk storage
capacity. Even with a 12 year old system running Windows 98SE
and 132 MB ATA drives, I just never seem to run out of disk
space. About the only aspect that I have is that my old tube
monitor died and the flat screen replacement monitor is MUCH
slower on a FULL SCREEN (black and white) refresh
Jerome Fine
