Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-12 Thread Guy Dawson
There's a reason why we ran the RA81s in pairs in the cluster... On 12 February 2016 at 01:39, Jay West wrote: > Guy wrote... > - > In late '86 I was running a VAX8500 with 2 RA81s > - > Can't be true. There's no such thing as running RA81's *Grin* > > J > > > -- 4.4 > 5.4

RE: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-12 Thread geneb
On Thu, 11 Feb 2016, Jay West wrote: Guy wrote... - In late '86 I was running a VAX8500 with 2 RA81s - Can't be true. There's no such thing as running RA81's *Grin* Don't laugh. in 1993 I was running FOUR of them connected to a VAX 8250. In my house. Upstairs. :) g. -- Proud owner

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-12 Thread Huw Davies
> On 12 Feb 2016, at 12:39, Jay West wrote: > > Guy wrote... > - > In late '86 I was running a VAX8500 with 2 RA81s > - > Can't be true. There's no such thing as running RA81's *Grin* My comments regarding RA81s run something like “we purchased two of the first RA81s in Australia but

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-12 Thread Huw Davies
> On 12 Feb 2016, at 06:48, Rich Alderson > wrote: > > DEC was the first company to build timeshared large systems as standard[1], > beginning with the PDP-6. The PDP-10 (a reimplementation of the PDP-6) was > successful enough to go through 3 generations (renamed to DECsystem-10 and > DECSYST

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Chuck Guzis
On 02/11/2016 05:39 PM, Jerome H. Fine wrote: Since your answer seems to be an unstated question, I will attempt to answer what you might have inferred. I was just attempting to note that the CDC 3300 hardware was able to support that function more than a DECADE earlier. By 1967 when I arrived

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Jerome H. Fine
>Rich Alderson wrote: From: Jerome H. Fine Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2016 8:56 AM Jon Elson wrote: We paid somewhere between 200 and 250K for our first 11/780. We had an RM05 and a TU77, and 256 KB of memory. It was a pretty basic system, but ran rings around the campus 360/65 system.

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Jon Elson
On 02/11/2016 10:56 AM, Jerome H. Fine wrote: >Jon Elson wrote: >On 02/11/2016 08:56 AM, Mark Wickens wrote: It's good to hear that the VAX was a cost-effective solution - there are too many stories about how expensive DEC gear was, but I imagine they primarily came after PCs started droppi

RE: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Jay West
Guy wrote... - In late '86 I was running a VAX8500 with 2 RA81s - Can't be true. There's no such thing as running RA81's *Grin* J

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Stefan Skoglund (lokal
tor 2016-02-11 klockan 13:41 -0800 skrev Glen Slick: > My memories from the early 1980s are of a room full of undergrads > working on rows of VT100s (maybe 50+ at least?) on a DECSYSTEM-2065 > running TOPS-20. > > Things usually seemed to run pretty well on that system, until the > night before p

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Guy Dawson
In late '86 I was running a VAX8500 with 2 RA81s and a TU80 for Deluxe Coachlines in Australia. We computerised their coach reservation system. System growth was brisk as the company and the application grew. The 8500 became an 8550 and gained some more RA81s and then in late 87 we move to a new s

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Paul Koning
> On Feb 11, 2016, at 3:52 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote: > >> ... > > In the mid-to-late 70’s, I was an undergrad at CMU. I had accounts on the > CS department’s systems. When I started, it was 2 KA10s. Eventually a > KL10 was added (all running a *heavily* patched version of TOPS10). > > During

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Glen Slick
My memories from the early 1980s are of a room full of undergrads working on rows of VT100s (maybe 50+ at least?) on a DECSYSTEM-2065 running TOPS-20. Things usually seemed to run pretty well on that system, until the night before programming assignments were due. Nothing quite like a room full o

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Guy Sotomayor
> On Feb 11, 2016, at 12:39 PM, William Donzelli wrote: > >> Indeed. RSTS/E did better, with less hardware -- 64 users on an 11/70 was >> no problem, and earlier on you could run 16 users on an 11/20 (though not >> all that comfortably). > > It all depends on what the users are doing, of cou

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread William Donzelli
> Indeed. RSTS/E did better, with less hardware -- 64 users on an 11/70 was no > problem, and earlier on you could run 16 users on an 11/20 (though not all > that comfortably). It all depends on what the users are doing, of course. When I went to school back in the late 1980s, the main computer

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread William Donzelli
> From the very beginning? That is, 25 October 1977? Some of the DECpeople that have graced the halls of RCS/RI have a wildly different opinion. VMS 1.0 was a total kludge, and could make an 11/780 fall over in no time flat. 2.0 was a huge improvement. VMS just had to go back in the oven for a w

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Paul Koning
> On Feb 11, 2016, at 2:48 PM, Rich Alderson > wrote: > > From: Jerome H. Fine > Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2016 8:56 AM > >>> Jon Elson wrote: > >>> We paid somewhere between 200 and 250K for our first 11/780. We had >>> an RM05 and a TU77, and 256 KB of memory. It was a pretty basic >

RE: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Rich Alderson
From: Jerome H. Fine Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2016 8:56 AM >> Jon Elson wrote: >> We paid somewhere between 200 and 250K for our first 11/780. We had >> an RM05 and a TU77, and 256 KB of memory. It was a pretty basic >> system, but ran rings around the campus 360/65 system. We also had a

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Sue Skonetski
Just thinking about Mark’s email here. Keeping in mind that this is from a DEC persons point of view. You probably all know and appreciate this. While the DEC hardware may have been more expensive than other companies many customers are still running the hardware today. I am thinking of sever

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread William Donzelli
> DEC VT100s > were around $1,800 in the early-1980s, VT100s (and terminals in general) often were used as bargaining chips to sweeten deals, so the price was quite "flexible". -- Will

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Ethan Dicks
On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 9:56 AM, Mark Wickens wrote: > It's good to hear that the VAX was a cost-effective solution - there are > too many stories about how expensive DEC gear was, but I imagine they > primarily came after PCs started dropping in price. > > On 9 February 2016 at 04:50, Ethan Dicks

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Jerome H. Fine
>Jon Elson wrote: >On 02/11/2016 08:56 AM, Mark Wickens wrote: It's good to hear that the VAX was a cost-effective solution - there are too many stories about how expensive DEC gear was, but I imagine they primarily came after PCs started dropping in price. We paid somewhere between 200 and

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Jon Elson
On 02/11/2016 08:56 AM, Mark Wickens wrote: It's good to hear that the VAX was a cost-effective solution - there are too many stories about how expensive DEC gear was, but I imagine they primarily came after PCs started dropping in price. We paid somewhere between 200 and 250K for our first 11

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-11 Thread Mark Wickens
It's good to hear that the VAX was a cost-effective solution - there are too many stories about how expensive DEC gear was, but I imagine they primarily came after PCs started dropping in price. On 9 February 2016 at 04:50, Ethan Dicks wrote: > On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 11:11 PM, william degnan >

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-08 Thread Ethan Dicks
On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 11:11 PM, william degnan wrote: > I ran my VAX 4000-200 all day today. Nice. > I have never worked with an older I happened to get a lot of opportunity in the 80s to work with VAXen, then Alphas in the 90s and a little beyond (I haven't been paid to run VMS since about 20

Re: VAXen and minimal memory (was Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..)

2016-02-08 Thread william degnan
On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 10:57 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote: > On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 9:48 PM, Jon Elson wrote: > > On 02/08/2016 03:23 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote: > >> > >> I don't know if you could use the 256K boards (populated with 4116s) in > >> the 11/730 due to the tri-voltage 4116s, but even if they w