4 ms·

So, anyone still use their PDP-8 for email and web browsing? I find myself falling in both pro and anti camps. Old hardware is cool and still useful but the wo

So, anyone still use their PDP-8 for email and web browsing? I find myself falling in both pro and anti camps. Old hardware is cool and still useful but the world does incompatibly move on. ASICs are a thing ... and they are often not built with standards that don't-yet-exist. Eg: try running IPv6 on older network gear. Also, hardware tends to get more capable for less power over time which leads to real environmental impact. OTOH: electronic waste is also an impacting problem. "forever" is an impossibly long time in tech... and some tech is definitely made to be cheap and ephemeral. Maybe "we" should start a classification system that gives some idea of the expected lifespan of a piece of technology. At that point, consumers can decide what the worth of a computer is that will be supported (or supportable) for 5,10,15,... years.

tony-allan 5y ago
At the very least I would want it to be in working condition in a museum. If I owned a PDP-8 I would want to still write software for it as a hobby. It would be a very cool email tool and with a signature "Sent from my PDP-8"!
- imoverclocked 5y ago
  Agreed! A museum seems like it should be in the condition it was in when the machine was used, not upgraded with a tcp/ip stack and thicknet/ethernet/wifi/whatever. If you are super into this, you could always emulate a PDP-8 on an FPGA, setup some kind of telephony link with a local machine and make an email client with that signature... all the kludge with 1/1000th the energy cost. :) More to the point: A categorization system would be helpful. eg: "this product relies on a cloud service vs this product can work in complete isolation given power and maybe cooling." I would expect a PDP-8 to be solidly in the latter category (works in isolation). I would expect a cheap feature phone has a very limited lifespan because it's filled with mass-produced, cheap circuitry and radios that only work in the context of current standards. Once cell-network technology moves on, those feature phones become useless. Both are reasonable categories to make a device fit into. For the people that want to pay extra for a toaster that is upgradeable or has swappable components, they should be able to find that as a standardized metric or certification. Some people just want a cheap device to plug in and make toast.

tony-allan 5y ago

At the very least I would want it to be in working condition in a museum. If I owned a PDP-8 I would want to still write software for it as a hobby. It would be a very cool email tool and with a signature "Sent from my PDP-8"!

imoverclocked 5y ago
Agreed! A museum seems like it should be in the condition it was in when the machine was used, not upgraded with a tcp/ip stack and thicknet/ethernet/wifi/whatever. If you are super into this, you could always emulate a PDP-8 on an FPGA, setup some kind of telephony link with a local machine and make an email client with that signature... all the kludge with 1/1000th the energy cost. :) More to the point: A categorization system would be helpful. eg: "this product relies on a cloud service vs this product can work in complete isolation given power and maybe cooling." I would expect a PDP-8 to be solidly in the latter category (works in isolation). I would expect a cheap feature phone has a very limited lifespan because it's filled with mass-produced, cheap circuitry and radios that only work in the context of current standards. Once cell-network technology moves on, those feature phones become useless. Both are reasonable categories to make a device fit into. For the people that want to pay extra for a toaster that is upgradeable or has swappable components, they should be able to find that as a standardized metric or certification. Some people just want a cheap device to plug in and make toast.