Researchers create laser light interconnects on silicon

[Bob Cain]

The irony, one of many, is that increased compute power has almost
always made computers less reliable and harder to use.

Yeah, who can forget the reliability and user ease of the '60s. So
reliable that we designed mainframes with almost all data paths within
the system being parity checked and with elaborate microcode retry
mechanisms to work around the detected failures.

I'm sure most people would prefer OS/360 TSO to Win XP too. Even that
was a big step backwards from having the machine operator help you
feed through punched card decks. I can't imagine how people today
cope without the 8" thick paper abend dumps to locate their bugs.

It's sure been a long, strange, downhill trip.


Bob

 

[John Larkin]

Yeah, who can forget the reliability and user ease of the '60s. So
reliable that we designed mainframes with almost all data paths within
the system being parity checked and with elaborate microcode retry
mechanisms to work around the detected failures.

I'm sure most people would prefer OS/360 TSO to Win XP too. Even that
was a big step backwards from having the machine operator help you
feed through punched card decks. I can't imagine how people today
cope without the 8" thick paper abend dumps to locate their bugs.

It's sure been a long, strange, downhill trip.


Bob

I had a DEC PDP-11 timeshare system that would handle a dozen users,
including some high-school hackers, run assemblers and compilers and
debuggers and utilities, in 512 kbytes of ram. It would run for months
between power failures. 1975, roughly.

John

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

I had a DEC PDP-11 timeshare system that would handle a dozen users,
including some high-school hackers, run assemblers and compilers and
debuggers and utilities, in 512 kbytes of ram. It would run for months
between power failures. 1975, roughly.

Surely you mean "...a massive 512 kbytes of ram"?

 

[Jim Thompson]

I had a DEC PDP-11 timeshare system that would handle a dozen users,
including some high-school hackers, run assemblers and compilers and
debuggers and utilities, in 512 kbytes of ram. It would run for months
between power failures. 1975, roughly.

John

I used a PDP-8 as a typewriter for my thesis. I still have the
punched tape around here somewhere ;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Surely you mean "...a massive 512 kbytes of ram"?

I'd be guessing 512 bytes if it was core.








--
_____ _ _
|_ _| | | | |
| | __ _ _ __ ___ | |__| | ___ _ __ ___ ___ _ __
| | / _` | '_ ` _ \ | __ |/ _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _ \ '__|
_| |_ | (_| | | | | | | | | | | (_) | | | | | | __/ |
|_____| \__,_|_| |_| |_| |_| |_|\___/|_| |_| |_|\___|_|
__ ____
/ _| | _ \
___ | |_ | |_) | ___ _ __ __ _
/ _ \| _| | _ < / _ \| '__/ _` |
| (_) | | | |_) | (_) | | | (_| |_
\___/|_| |____/ \___/|_| \__, (_)
__/ |
|___/

 

[Homer J Simpson]

I'm sure most people would prefer OS/360 TSO to Win XP too. Even that
was a big step backwards from having the machine operator help you
feed through punched card decks. I can't imagine how people today
cope without the 8" thick paper abend dumps to locate their bugs.

By using adb to debug their C++ code?






--
_____ _ _
|_ _| | | | |
| | __ _ _ __ ___ | |__| | ___ _ __ ___ ___ _ __
| | / _` | '_ ` _ \ | __ |/ _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _ \ '__|
_| |_ | (_| | | | | | | | | | | (_) | | | | | | __/ |
|_____| \__,_|_| |_| |_| |_| |_|\___/|_| |_| |_|\___|_|
__ ____
/ _| | _ \
___ | |_ | |_) | ___ _ __ __ _
/ _ \| _| | _ < / _ \| '__/ _` |
| (_) | | | |_) | (_) | | | (_| |_
\___/|_| |____/ \___/|_| \__, (_)
__/ |
|___/

 

[krw]

I had a DEC PDP-11 timeshare system that would handle a dozen users,
including some high-school hackers, run assemblers and compilers and
debuggers and utilities, in 512 kbytes of ram. It would run for months
between power failures. 1975, roughly.

How did you put 512K on a PDP-11? I had several (from /23s to
/45s) built into various test gear, none had more than 56K core (8K
left for I/O). They only had a 16bit address bus.

 

[krw]

I'd be guessing 512 bytes if it was core.

The first one I bought (a PDP-11/35 in a Tektronix SPS system) was
56K bytes of *core*. They didn't make 512byte planes, nor did they
make 512KB PDP-11s, AFAIK.

 

[John Larkin]

The first one I bought (a PDP-11/35 in a Tektronix SPS system) was
56K bytes of *core*. They didn't make 512byte planes, nor did they
make 512KB PDP-11s, AFAIK.

I started timesharing with a PDP-11/20 with, I think, 32K words (64
kbytes) of core, moved up to an 11/45, and, by the time they fired me,
was running RSTS/E timesharing on a PDP 11/70 with 256k words of
cached dram, a bunch of big disk drives, magtape, DecTape, card
reader, paper tape reader/punch, line printers, modems, and a
full-time operator. We even interfaced an IBM 029 keypunch machine.
The RSTS os would run in native mode or would emulate the RSX-11 or
RT-11 operating systems perfectly.

We bought scores of PDP-11s for pipeline control systems, mostly run
under the REX rtos authored by, um, me.

John

 

[John Larkin]

How did you put 512K on a PDP-11? I had several (from /23s to
/45s) built into various test gear, none had more than 56K core (8K
left for I/O). They only had a 16bit address bus.

It was an 11/70 with 512 kbytes of dram (Intel 1103's, I think) and
memory management hardware. At any one time, a program could see a 64
kbyte code space and a separate 64 kbyte data space, invisibly
remapped into physical memory, and swappable/relocatable as needed by
the os. Program space was read-only, which Intel is still struggling
to accomplish, and Windows can never properly support. The OS was
totally invisible from user-mode access, truly uncrashable; the system
ran for months at a time.

Most of the bigger 11's had memory management. Even the bigger
micro-11's, the Qbus 11/23 and 11/73, could access 512 kbytes of
physical memory.

John

 

[Alexander Grigoriev]

IIRC, LSI11/73 (J11 CPU) had 22 bits of physical addres on QBUS. F11 cpu had
18 bits.

 

[John Larkin]

IIRC, LSI11/73 (J11 CPU) had 22 bits of physical addres on QBUS. F11 cpu had
18 bits.

You're probably right. It's been a while.

I loved the PDP-11. It taught me how to think.

John

 

[jmfbahciv]

It was an 11/70 with 512 kbytes of dram (Intel 1103's, I think) and
memory management hardware. At any one time, a program could see a 64
kbyte code space and a separate 64 kbyte data space, invisibly
remapped into physical memory, and swappable/relocatable as needed by
the os. Program space was read-only, which Intel is still struggling
to accomplish, and Windows can never properly support. The OS was
totally invisible from user-mode access, truly uncrashable; the system
ran for months at a time.

Most of the bigger 11's had memory management. Even the bigger
micro-11's, the Qbus 11/23 and 11/73, could access 512 kbytes of
physical memory.

Do you remember the OS' name? IAS or RT? Or somebody else's OS?

It was probably a tad later than 1975.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

You're probably right. It's been a while.

I loved the PDP-11. It taught me how to think.

<grin> Yep. Among other things. They are still manufactured
but under a different logo.

/BAH

 

[Bob Immenhaus]

Brings back memories....I mean nightmares.

 

[John Larkin]

Do you remember the OS' name? IAS or RT? Or somebody else's OS?

I ran the RSTS/E timesharing system on the big 11/70. DEC also had...

DOS-11, like it sounds.

RT-11 junior version of DOS. I think DOS inherited a lot from RT-11

RT-11 sort of like DOS. I think DOS inherited a lot from RT-11

RT-11 sort of like DOS. I think DOS inherited a lot from RT-11

Of course, UNIX was written on and for the PDP-11.

It was probably a tad later than 1975.

They fired me in early '79, so it wasn't much later.

John

 

[John Larkin]

<grin> Yep. Among other things. They are still manufactured
but under a different logo.

Really? Got a name or a link?

I program mostly 68K's nowadays, very like a 32-bit PDP-11.

John

 

[Homer J Simpson]

The first one I bought (a PDP-11/35 in a Tektronix SPS system) was
56K bytes of *core*. They didn't make 512byte planes, nor did they
make 512KB PDP-11s, AFAIK.

56K is a lot of core - wasn't it all hand knitted back then by ladies with
tweezers?















...
...

 

[krw]

I started timesharing with a PDP-11/20 with, I think, 32K words (64
kbytes) of core, moved up to an 11/45, and, by the time they fired me,
was running RSTS/E timesharing on a PDP 11/70 with 256k words of
cached dram, a bunch of big disk drives, magtape, DecTape, card
reader, paper tape reader/punch, line printers, modems, and a
full-time operator. We even interfaced an IBM 029 keypunch machine.
The RSTS os would run in native mode or would emulate the RSX-11 or
RT-11 operating systems perfectly.

I guess I'd forgotten (if I ever knew) that PDP-11s had an MMU.
The only ones I used were in the Tektronix systems. The last one I
bought had a /45 (or was it a /44?) in it. I later bought a VAX
11/780 via Fairchild to run our test floor.

 

[krw]

56K is a lot of core - wasn't it all hand knitted back then by ladies with
tweezers?

It was a lot of anything in '76/77. The core came in handy though,
I didn't have a hard disk at first and only had a dual 8" floppy
drive. One could halt the system and power it off. The next day
just power it back on and hit the run switch.