OTD 1975, Digital announces the #PDP-11/70

[lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org]

@aka_pugs There was a time when I could toggle the bootstrap into one of those babies in a few seconds with my eyes closed.

[paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange]

@aka_pugs

i was trying to remember the boot sequence for a PDP 11/70 from disk.

i think that the 21 addr switches were an octal 17773052 but can't remember what we did with the 7 switches on the right. it was four movements, ending with "start"?

anyone remember better than me?

[martinvermeer@fediscience.org]

@stevenray @aka_pugs

Remembering that from the PDP 11/10, which only had 16 address switches, accessing a 64 kB address space. BTW note the three-bit blocks for making life easier with octal numbers.

We ran serious software in that. Yes it looks gorgeous, but perhaps the aesthetics wears off a bit after many times manually entering the boot loader through those switches.

We did have Unix on our machine and it wasn't multitasking. But a beautiful CPU architecture, much like the Motorola 6809 that was my next one. Running the Microware OS-9 mini-Unix OS, my entry point to Unix.

[catselbow@fosstodon.org]

@martinvermeer @stevenray @aka_pugs

The picture is missing the yellowed piece of paper with boot instructions, taped to the rack.

[chris@mastodon.mihalis.net]

@stevenray @aka_pugs
https://obsolescence.dev/pdp11.html

[hmallett@toot.wales]

@aka_pugs 4 MB must have been a huge amount of memory at that time.

[johnrohde@helvede.net]

@aka_pugs There is a retro RasPi version that I totally crave.

[winkleink@mastodon.social]

@aka_pugs in 1987 my college was still using one. Default password was pass. Found unassigned accounts and had fun.
Coded a version of Patients/Solitaire on it and one day went into the computer lap and everyone was playing it. #i May have negatively affected the grades that year.

Edited to change 1087 to 1987

[mason@partychickens.net]

@hmallett @aka_pugs My first computer had 16K in 1982. No Unix, sadly. Unix wouldn't appear in my house until the 90s, via NetBSD.

[stevenray@sfba.social]

@chris @aka_pugs ha, that's incredible! Thanks for this.

[chris@mastodon.mihalis.net]

@stevenray @aka_pugs I never spotted until today that one of the photos on this website shows Ken Thompson (the father of Unix) with a pidp-11 he assembled. That makes it as legit as could be for running Unix

[stevenray@sfba.social]

@chris @aka_pugs yup, saw that and I thought so, too!

[peterhoneyman@a2mi.social]

@paul_ipv6 @aka_pugs

773110 is burned into my brain

[peterhoneyman@a2mi.social]

@aka_pugs hmm, my recollection is 128k

[paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange]

@peterhoneyman @aka_pugs

boot from tape or different type of disk?

[peterhoneyman@a2mi.social]

@paul_ipv6 @aka_pugs

I forget. I think we had an RM-80 (maybe?) and two RK-05 removables

[aka_pugs@mastodon.social]

@peterhoneyman @paul_ipv6 RM-80 was after my time.

[flux@wandering.shop]

@aka_pugs yeah, but not 4MB per process

[larsbrinkhoff@mastodon.sdf.org]

@aka_pugs The 11/74 was cancelled because it was to good compared to contemporary VAX models.

[tanavit@toot.aquilenet.fr]

@paul_ipv6

I guess these switches were, among others, used to read and write memory.

I had to program this computer in binary (not assembler, binary) when I learnt computer science some years ago.

In my memory, the keys were shades of blue.

@aka_pugs