Who's rewired their house for this hobby?

[Eric Smith]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 2:02 PM, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, yes, of course. Which leads to the question why DEC did not go
> that route. I guess the KL10 power supply people were drunk (again).

Last year I went to lunch with a friend, and he introduced me to one of his
friends, who had worked for DEC for a long time. We got to talking about
various DEC machines, and I mentioned that I was surprised about an
aspect of the KL10 design. To my astonishment, he replied, "The reason
I made that decision was..."

He probably wasn't involved in the ECL power supply design, but next time
I see him I'll ask.

I have heard from multiple sources that DEC made it a point never to design
machines that actually needed a "machine room".  Even the KL10-based
systems and the VAX 9000 were intended to be usable in an ordinary office,
though that was rarely done in practice.  Perhaps the use of 400 Hz power was
considered to make that significantly less practical.