Don't Nurse Old Hardware - Emulate It 403
gManZboy writes "Bob Supnik, former team lead for DEC's VAX microprossesor, has an article up on Queue about his Computer History Simulation Project and how emulating old servers may be a better way to keep them running that servicing the physical machines. So how many PDP-11's can you run on a Pentium 4 anyhow?"
or how many (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree. It's not the same thing.
-- Signed: your friendly PDP-11 system operator downstairs, 3 years from retirement.
It depends... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:or how many (Score:2, Funny)
Re:A guess (Score:4, Funny)
It's called Wintux [matthewmiller.net]
Re:More important question: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:none. (Score:5, Funny)
Not to anyone who's ever tried to pick one up!
Re:Good idea... but... (Score:4, Funny)
Damm are you young, when someone says 5.25 disks I dont even think too old.
Bring on the 8 Inchers, now those were the days they also fly great, late Friday afternoon we would all let loose by flying them around like frisbees, all fun and games till someone get a corner in the eye.
You might be a vax geek if... (Score:5, Funny)
Key traits identifying individuals tendencies towards abnormal preoccupation with VAX computer systems
9. When talking about building software you make reference to
compilation times in weeks and days instead of minutes and seconds.
8. You stopped purchasing new furniture when you realized that
your computers work just as well.
7. Your electricity bill is more than your monthly rent payment.
6. You've been hospitalized with muscle strain injuries after
performing some routine hardware maintenance on your computer.
5. You don't have an SO, but it's okay because your computer keeps
you warm at night.
4. While doing laundry, you occassionaly have a mental lapse and try to
wash your socks and underwear in your 11/750.
3. Friends who visit you want to know why there are old-time movie reels
stuck on your refridgerator(s).
2. Your house is pleasantly warm in the dead of winter, even with the air
conditioning turned all the way up.
1. The lights in your home dim or flicker when you reboot.
0. It doesn't matter to you if someone else's computer is faster because
you know your system could smash theirs flat if it fell over on it.
Nice idea, but good luck (Score:3, Funny)
Regression testing. Emulation's nice, but it ain't the same as the original hardware. Which means, people will need to regression test. Trick is, the people that know what that old PDP-ll is actually doing retired a long time ago. So who's going to write the test cases?
SIMH URL (Score:3, Funny)
Been wanting to buy an old 11/780 shell for a while. Not for a bar, but to mount both my Mac and Gaming PC innards in. This'd be a real trip to run as an emulator during parties. Now to interface the VT-120... Hack the shell I suppose. Run everything USB. >:D
Changing WOW factor. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Good idea... but... (Score:4, Funny)
late Friday afternoon we would all let loose by flying them around like frisbees
And then I saw your user id...
Re:legal issues? (Score:5, Funny)
I think they patented some aspects of emulation, mainly to shut down people selling GBA emus for palmtops.
Given the current state of patent law, chances are that any universal Turing machine now owes Nintendo royalties.
My First (Score:2, Funny)
Just a guess ... (Score:5, Funny)
All of them?
Wow, now I can play Adventure... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Good idea... but... (Score:1, Funny)
Easy, it's an emulator. It will just multiply your 3.5" drive by 1.5.
Re:All Well and good. (Score:3, Funny)
How sad for me to find out that not only am I obsolete, I'm also obscure. I remember PrimeOS fondly if for no other reason than it was where I cut my teeth as a young hacker.
Would have been about 1984, dialing in to a univeristy's Prime in another state. Me on my Commodore 64 with my Microbits 300 baud modem (I was the fastest kid on the block. Everyone else had 110 or baudots). It was like NetHack, but in real life. Learned to get in. Learned to navigate. Learned about these great things called directories (unavailable on my Commodore 1541 disks). When I couldn't affort to buy new floppy disks, I started storing all of my programs and files on their mainframe. They seemed to have plenty of space. I was in there for more than a year before I got caught. Ah... those were the days.
Thank for you for the trip down memory lane.
Re:All Well and good. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More important question: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Funny)
How can you emulate the experience of getting a maintenance notice
in the mail from DEC that included a software patch on DECtape and
explicit instructions on how to patch the hardware via wire-wrap?
Or getting out the oscilloscope to set the baudrate on your PDP-11/05? And then
booting said 11/05 by
1) entering a program in octal via the front panel that is just
good enough to read a bootstrapper from paper tape,
2) jumping to the boostrapper from the front panel thus
3) reading a second boostrapper from paper tape
which in turn has a boostrapper to read from disk,
4) which in turn finally gets around to reading the bootblock
5) which might actually know something about booting RTS from that RK05 or RL10 or what-have-you.
Not very fair... (Score:4, Funny)
"The truth is, Slashdot is basically a Gamer site."
Oh come on now, that's not fair. We also talk about pr0n.
Re:My First (Score:5, Funny)
An LED-screen-based terminal emulator with a 300 baud modem dialing up to the PDP 11 shouldn't really count...
...on the head of a pin (Score:2, Funny)
All of them?