22 Feb
2003
22 Feb
'03
4:07 a.m.
Jim Battle wrote:
> If you were to time travel to 1970 and find a lab using a PDP-8 doing
> some kind of computational work, and ask them if they'd want to trade it
> in for a 3 GHz PC that you brought back with you from the future, I have
> no doubt that they'd take the PC and they'd find a way to make it work,
> despite the I/O and software differences.
of course, it would only be usefull to them if they could program it, if
you didn't bring volumes of intel documentation it wouldn't do much
good.
similar, the hardware, just try to build a pci card with 1970 hardware
so you would be stuck with the serial and paralell ports (unless the
machine did USB in which case it would be really useless)... and if the
machine failed in the lab it couldn't be replicated or repaired...
then there is the development and downtime involved in making the
change, it might take longer to do the total job, this is the main
reason that there are still pdp-8s is service.
more is not always better, look at all the z80 machines still being
built.
as for what a REAL computer is, I submit that it is subjective, based on
whatever the individual can assembly-level program. Most pc machines
are the worst sort of junk, but the rc25 and ba23 are proof that dec
didn't mind taking the odd shortcut and the proliant 6000 I'm using to
type this on (both as computer and desk) with it's 750watt hot-swap
power supplies, multiple RAIDs (hot swap drives) and several XEON
cpus(cooled by redundiant fans) using ECC ram just might be more
reliable than my pdp-11s ever were...
REAL...?
get real... :)
perhaps 'real' is actually subjective, based on what the observer can
comfortably lift?
Pavl_