I agree that it's great to be able to get a SBC for the price of lunch, and that just wasn't possible in the 1970s. But the AI Lab PDP-10s were extremely acces

I agree that it's great to be able to get a SBC for the price of lunch, and that just wasn't possible in the 1970s. But the AI Lab PDP-10s were extremely accessible. I walked right up to them several times, and I was never affiliated with the Lab. (I was an undergrad.) The Lab wasn't exactly open to the public, but they didn't actually keep anyone out either. The PDP-10 itself was mostly discrete logic, so you could see the components and their interconnections just by looking at them. In addition, DEC published full schematics for most of their products. (I never saw the PDP-10 schematics, but it would be unusual if they weren't available.) If that wasn't enough, Alan Kotok, the architect, came by TMRC every couple of weeks and was more than happy to expound on any part of the system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kotok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kotok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Model_Railroad_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Model_Railroad_Club