On 05/24/2011 10:29 AM, Zane H. Healy wrote:
At 9:48 AM -0400 5/24/11, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 5/24/11 9:13 AM, allison wrote:
With 8KW you need a really old copy of RT11 maybe
V3 or V2 and it would
not do much.
Heck Allison, RT11 v4 and v5 don't do much either! ;)
Now those are fighting words... I find v5.4 and higher to be very
capable.
Dave,
Huh? Well, maybe from the quadcore terabyte Internet connected 3dHD
graphics
point of view.
Technically computers are useless as hammers but very useful like
hammers when you have a saw, wood, and a box of nails. So to me in 1983
a relatively small PDP11 with 20mb of removable disk was more useful than
a IBM PC running DOS and whole lot faster. I had the experience and
foresight
with my experience with Z80 and CP/M to know that a few basic tools and
environment begest useful software.
So from my desk in 1983 what I had was the hammer (the ultimate hammer
was a VAX730) and it was mine!
That was the working OS for my local system for the better part of 5 years
at DEC when other people were still wishing for a "desktop computer" I
had one and with EDT, spreadsheet, database, ASMbler, BASIC, and DECUS C,
and even connectivity (vterm) to the mainframe. EDT (ked) was no word
processor but it understood Teco and was a screen editor very fast and
keystroke compatible with Vedit (on my Z80 systems at home). That and it
worked like EDIT on the VAX. The reason for that is I could
run the VT100 and later VT220 at 19200 and the VAX (MILLRAT::).
Connectivity
was 4800 baud(and pushing it) current loop then (best guess was more than
1000ft of wire between my desk and the VAX) and terminal servers (LAT)
hadn't been invented. So a screen update by edit via VAX was often slow but
the PDP11 was not hampered that way. As a result of my work the printer
hooked to it was a 12PPM Laser (LN01). That meant I didn't have to
read LP26
band printer green bar and like to the other building for it (DEC mill).
That system was 11/23 and later 11/23B with 2mb and two RL02s and a RX02
in corp cab next to m desk. I also have a LN01 Printer (using LP27
interface card)
for printing. Later it ran RSTS then RSX11 with a DEQNA decnet
phaseIII and
one of the services was "printserver" allowing local users via network
to print
to that LN01.
To me RT11( I ran XM) was the equivalent of CP/M on Z80 and provided a
useful environment to do the things I needed to do. Imagination made
it useful
as I could gather or cook up the bits needed to do my work and often faster.
So RT11V5..useless no, not at all.
Allison
Zane