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I saw PDP-8 and two ASR-33 on a garbage pile in around 1980. I knew that if I take them, it will destroy my life, I would do nothing else than tinker those for

I saw PDP-8 and two ASR-33 on a garbage pile in around 1980. I knew that if I take them, it will destroy my life, I would do nothing else than tinker those for the rest of the millennium.

SoftTalker 1y ago
Working on a teletype at 110 baud gets old really fast.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  I couldn't stand those ASR-33's. I'd wait until a Decwriter was available (300 baud).
  - glimshe 1y ago
    When I started doing BBSs, I used 300 baud at times. Unbearable. "Nobody ought to need more than 2400 baud" is what I felt with the upgrade! Until 14400 came along, of course...
    - jandrese 1y ago
      It got really bad when the BBS got all fancy and colorful with the ANSI graphics. Every character displayed might require 6 or 7 bytes down the wire to change the foreground and background color so your 2400 baud modem acted like a 300 baud modem or worse.
dhosek 1y ago
That’s why, when the local college was decommissioning their IBM minicomputer, I opted not to buy it (it would have been under a thousand bucks, as I recall, although I probably would have spent that much a month on air conditioning if I set it up in my apartment, not to mention the overall impracticality of it.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
PaulHoule 1y ago
If you think the 6502 doesn't have enough registers and addressing modes... Try the PDP-8. The PDP-11 on the other hand has a lot of registers and addressing modes. A kid with a TRS-80 in 1980 might have thought the "16-bit" PDP-11 looked like the future although it really was the past, as it dated from 1970. The greatest weakness of it was that the user had a 16-bit address space so a PDP-11 running RSTS/E gave everybody a BASIC experience a little bit better than an Apple ][ or alternately the ability to run applications similar to CP/M. The machine as a whole had more than 64k of RAM but as a user you got 64k of code and 64k of data -- so it was a little bit better than the 8-bitters of 1980 but not as good as the IBM PC for having a bigger "problem space" to work on bigger problems. My high school got a VAX to replace our PDP-8 and the computer club got it. We had two video terminals and a printing terminal, originally the printing terminal was the main terminal that was used when the machine was brought up in single-user mode. I swapped in one of the video terminals in this role, powered it up, and had the VDT catch on fire -- so we cleaned up the other terminal before bringing the machine up with that.
- djmips 1y ago
  But it was the future if you got a Mac or Atari ST or Amiga!

I saw PDP-8 and two ASR-33 on a garbage pile in around 1980. I knew that if I take them, it will destroy my life, I would do nothing else than tinker those for the rest of the millennium.

SoftTalker 1y ago

Working on a teletype at 110 baud gets old really fast.

WalterBright 1y ago
I couldn't stand those ASR-33's. I'd wait until a Decwriter was available (300 baud).
- glimshe 1y ago
  When I started doing BBSs, I used 300 baud at times. Unbearable. "Nobody ought to need more than 2400 baud" is what I felt with the upgrade! Until 14400 came along, of course...
  - jandrese 1y ago
    It got really bad when the BBS got all fancy and colorful with the ANSI graphics. Every character displayed might require 6 or 7 bytes down the wire to change the foreground and background color so your 2400 baud modem acted like a 300 baud modem or worse.

dhosek 1y ago

That’s why, when the local college was decommissioning their IBM minicomputer, I opted not to buy it (it would have been under a thousand bucks, as I recall, although I probably would have spent that much a month on air conditioning if I set it up in my apartment, not to mention the overall impracticality of it.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

PaulHoule 1y ago

If you think the 6502 doesn't have enough registers and addressing modes... Try the PDP-8. The PDP-11 on the other hand has a lot of registers and addressing modes. A kid with a TRS-80 in 1980 might have thought the "16-bit" PDP-11 looked like the future although it really was the past, as it dated from 1970. The greatest weakness of it was that the user had a 16-bit address space so a PDP-11 running RSTS/E gave everybody a BASIC experience a little bit better than an Apple ][ or alternately the ability to run applications similar to CP/M. The machine as a whole had more than 64k of RAM but as a user you got 64k of code and 64k of data -- so it was a little bit better than the 8-bitters of 1980 but not as good as the IBM PC for having a bigger "problem space" to work on bigger problems. My high school got a VAX to replace our PDP-8 and the computer club got it. We had two video terminals and a printing terminal, originally the printing terminal was the main terminal that was used when the machine was brought up in single-user mode. I swapped in one of the video terminals in this role, powered it up, and had the VDT catch on fire -- so we cleaned up the other terminal before bringing the machine up with that.

djmips 1y ago
But it was the future if you got a Mac or Atari ST or Amiga!