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I'm sure I wanted a PDP11 but couldn't afford it but I did have a Heathkit H8 which my cat loved to sleep on. Separate serial port for the monitor. 8,000 individually soldered connections. Note the 1975 (?) price -- approximately $7,000 in 2023!
Originally programmed via the front panel keypad -- and this had to be repeated every time the power cycled. Later via cassette tape to load BASIC or assembly language programs. The assembler was named HASL8 and was truly a hassle if one bit was incorrect and the program would assemble gibberish. Eventually gained floppy disks. I had a program that tracked some stock prices for which I added end of week pricing on Friday night. The 8080 CPU-run machine would start printing out data on the dot matrix printer sometime turning the night for me to review Saturday morning.
Wish I still had it -- to help heat my office for one thing..
How many can say they bootstrapped an old DEC machine. what's that bunky, you miss those days?
well here ya go.
Now you can get an emulator
You probably can run VaxOS on it if you don't mind it running too fast.
Well, I started out in computer life on a PDP-8 that booted with switches and then made that huge technological leap to punch tape. That looks pretty modern (and VaxOS was kinda, sorta neat)
I was about to buy a paper tape punch/reader but the floppy disk arrived in the store -- not as kool but more practical. I think the single sided 5" floppy held 100m (not "g"). Other than a simple boot process there was no software in ROM -- everything including BASIC had to be loaded after turning the machine On.
I was about to buy a paper tape punch/reader but the floppy disk arrived in the store -- not as kool but more practical. I think the single sided 5" floppy held 100m (not "g"). Other than a simple boot process there was no software in ROM -- everything including BASIC had to be loaded after turning the machine On.
-- Chuck
The 8" floppy held about 80k, followed by the 180k and then 360k 5.5" floppies and then the 1.2m 3.5" came along. If you are really old, the term DSDD meant a lot of data in one place. .
You booted from a system floppy (TRS80 Basic, CPM, DOS1 or above). Hard drives came along in the early '80's (unless you remember the "wash tub IBM drives with the removable disk packs).
I never used a PDP 11 but I took a crew and trucks to recover a DEC PDP 11 system from a closed steel mill in PA and bring it back to our mill. My superintendent wanted it to run in our area until the Data group found out about it and confiscated it. We had big plans for that machine!
I did learn to program on a tape system but it was for an early CNC mill. That was a lot of fun.
If you are really old, the term DSDD meant a lot of data in one place. .
Yep! Thant's me! My first disk drive was 5.25", full height, and was SSSD, single side single density with 10 hard sectors . Probably 90K per diskette. Heathkit like the H8 and very conservative technology with no pesky soft sectored diskettes. Up until then I was using cassette tape. Get home from work, go into my home office and fire the H8 up and hit Load on the front panel and Play on the tape deck, and it was usually ready to go when my clothes were changed.
12-30-2023, 04:34 AM
for teh old geeks
