Re: The good old days.

[John Garison <john -at- garisons -dot- com>]

When I went to work for DEC in '76, doc was part of R&D, and everyone in 
R&D had to learn how to cold start a PDP-11 ... toggle in the bootstrap 
address, load the papertape with the basic instructions, and let 'er 
rip. I recall it took about 10 minutes ... certainly not 18 hours!

But the thing was great. And a friend of mine had one ... used it as 
much as a heat source in the winter as for anything else.

In the summertime in the old Mill, if it got too hot (above about 85 or 
90 Fahrenheit) the computer room would get too hot and all the systems 
would shut down to prevent overheating ... and we would all get to go home.

I used to write the manuals for some of the operating systems: RSX-11, 
RSX-11M, RT-11, RSTS/E ... using Runoff (or perhaps its precursor ... 
the memory dims). I do remember writing the very first EDT Editor manual 
...


John G





Simon North wrote:
> I was given (well, I swapped it for a crate of beer) a PDP 11/44 about 12 years ago. It takes 
> at least 2 people to mount a hard disk; the darn things weighs about 80 kg. The CPU alone 
> draws 4 kW ... and from a cold start it takes me about 18 hours to do a full reboot. There are 
> 16 manuals for the basic system, plus another 22 for the OS (RSX 11 ... but it's still a 
> wonderful machine. 
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