4 ms·

Nice! It reminds me of the EDSAC simulator, which I find extremely important: http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~edsac/ http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~edsac/ Why i

Nice! It reminds me of the EDSAC simulator, which I find extremely important: http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~edsac/ http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~edsac/ Why important, you say? Well, these old computers aren't around any more, and what better way to teach new computer-science wannabe's the values of 35-bit computing? ;) Shall we play a game? Honestly, the joke angle is lost on me - old computers don't die, their users just degrade them! A working computer, whatever the age, is still a damned fine machine to be using, User!

unimpressive 15y ago
>Honestly, the joke angle is lost on me - old computers don't die, their users just degrade them! A working computer, whatever the age, is still a damned fine machine to be using, User! I think that the likes of Richard Greenblat and Bill Gosper would disagree with you. Just from a description of the PDP versus the IMB mainframes it's obvious that the articles produced by DEC were superior machines.
- seclorum 15y ago
  See, thats where it all began - this malignant thought that 'old computers' are 'dead computers'. Computers don't stop being useful because of age - they stop being useful because someone makes the decision not to find a use for them.
  - unimpressive 15y ago
    I don't see what you're getting at. Those machines were produced in the same time period. Old machines that only have KB of memory do stop being useful because of age. At this point it would be an egregious use of power to run these things to do calculations that can be done by your cellphone in milliseconds. If you want to experience ITS, run an emulator.
    - seclorum 15y ago
      At one point, 64kb was useful for something. There is an infinite number of uses for 64kb. Its only the decision being made that its not useful any more that makes it so - the users change, not the computers. I still break out my 8-bit machines now and then for some fun, localized, minimal computing. Its amazing how much you can get done in a little bit of RAM, but the 'amazing' is just the result of an arbitrary decision, nothing more.

unimpressive 15y ago

>Honestly, the joke angle is lost on me - old computers don't die, their users just degrade them! A working computer, whatever the age, is still a damned fine machine to be using, User! I think that the likes of Richard Greenblat and Bill Gosper would disagree with you. Just from a description of the PDP versus the IMB mainframes it's obvious that the articles produced by DEC were superior machines.

seclorum 15y ago
See, thats where it all began - this malignant thought that 'old computers' are 'dead computers'. Computers don't stop being useful because of age - they stop being useful because someone makes the decision not to find a use for them.
- unimpressive 15y ago
  I don't see what you're getting at. Those machines were produced in the same time period. Old machines that only have KB of memory do stop being useful because of age. At this point it would be an egregious use of power to run these things to do calculations that can be done by your cellphone in milliseconds. If you want to experience ITS, run an emulator.
  - seclorum 15y ago
    At one point, 64kb was useful for something. There is an infinite number of uses for 64kb. Its only the decision being made that its not useful any more that makes it so - the users change, not the computers. I still break out my 8-bit machines now and then for some fun, localized, minimal computing. Its amazing how much you can get done in a little bit of RAM, but the 'amazing' is just the result of an arbitrary decision, nothing more.