# A great dose of nostalgia for DEC PDP-8 and PDP-11 fans **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** computer-hardware\ **Created:** [June 27, 2021, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136 "2021-06-27T21:34:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2021, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/21 "2021-06-28T05:10:58Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > I worked at a lab in the mid-1970s that had their own home-grown editor that could do that. The underlying program wasn’t even an editor, it was just an app for manipulating text. Based on that, there was an entire quite elaborate text editor, and also a RUNOFF-like text formatter. The underlying language operated on arrays of character strings, and had a FORTH-like syntax. This was also accessible at the editor and formatter source-document levels, so end-users could write their own macros for their documents. > > troff, the Unix text formatter, allowed for elaborate macro programming too. > > Many Unix users were fond of emacs, another text editor with extensive programming abilities. But good luck fitting any of these elaborate apps on your typical PDP-8! I did my PhD dissertation on runoff, on a Multics machine. Another grad student did macros for dissertation formatting. Most people had a grad student wife type it back then. And I have Xemacs running on my laptop. Not good for everything, but much better for coding Perl or raw html than anything that comes on the computer. True the PDP-11 line editor was junk, but it was still a lot better than punch cards. ---
**Author:** ![Karen\_Lingel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karen_lingel/32/18649_2.png) [@Karen\_Lingel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karen_Lingel)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2021, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/22 "2021-06-28T05:15:53Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Did this machine have a ROM boot? Our research machine did, the Ed-11 (the one we taught assembler on) did not, and you had to enter the first few lines of the bootstrap routine from the front panel. As I remember it (it was 37 years ago) there were 16 switches on the front of the machine, and you set the 16 switches to the bootup address (16 bits), then pushed a button (“Go”? “Boot”? “Enter”? I don’t remember what that button was called.) I don’t remember having to enter more than one address in order to boot up. We did other things with those switches – I don’t remember what – but to reboot we always had to move the switches. At some point we marked the “1” bits with dots of Wite-Out so the new people could also reboot. Hey, anyone remember Wite-Out? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2021, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/23 "2021-06-28T06:33:23Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > \* - Which also led me to a great admiration of the craft of Dave Cutler, its principal architect, who was later hired away by Bill Gates and became the architect of Windows NT, which became the kernel of all Windows systems from XP onwards. Incidental trivia: Much has been made of the fact that the initials “HAL” – the name of the intelligent computer in _2001: A Space Odyssey_ – if transposed with the immediately following letters of the alphabet, spell “IBM”. Cutler, who went on from his brilliant design of RSX-11M to being one of the principal architects of the VMS operating system for the VAX before being hired by Microsoft, has always been coy about the origin of the “Windows NT” name. It’s supposed to stand for “Windows - New Technology”. But take “WNT” and go one letter _back_ in the alphabet, and what do you get? There are, in fact, many concepts and terminologies common to VMS and the Windows NT family right up to the present day. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2021, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/24 "2021-06-28T08:32:29Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Many Unix users were fond of emacs, another text editor with extensive programming abilities. But good luck fitting any of these elaborate apps on your typical PDP-8! This is not surprising, since the first Emacs was in fact available as TECO macros. I think I even used it a few times on TOPS-20. New-fangled [Video TECO](https://sourceforge.net/projects/videoteco/), [Sci-teco](https://github.com/rhaberkorn/sciteco), and regular teco are still available and work fine on modern operating systems (though not necessarily the to-go editor recommended to new users), including OpenVMS, and of course Lisp Emacs remains ever popular. “Vim” is practically a light-weight editor by today’s standards but of course things were different in 1962 or on a PDP-8. ---
**Author:** ![Kzbre5m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f08c70/32.png) [@Kzbre5m](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kzbre5m)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2021, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/25 "2021-06-28T11:58:54Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > I actually have a real PDP-11/73 in my garage. It doesn’t run. I don’t know what I am ever going to do with it. But of course you do 😀 I’m in the same problem as you, though not as big: two TIPC’s (“almost IBM PCs”) that may work, with lots of software. Anyone have a good home? ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/26 "2021-06-29T00:00:57Z")
> [@Topologist](#): > > But it had TECO and what I think was then a relatively new set of editor macros built on top of TECO, which went by the name EMACS. > [@DPRK](#): > > This is not surprising, since the first Emacs was in fact available as TECO macros. I think I even used it a few times on TOPS-20. “Today I learned” I never knew that EMACS originated as a set of TECO macros until this thread. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/27 "2021-06-29T00:55:55Z")
> [@Karen\_Lingel](#): > > Hey, anyone remember Wite-Out? To use on your screen? 😉 I like these threads. They make me feel younger. Not that I _am_ younger; I wasted those years with Trash-80 crap. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/28 "2021-06-29T01:11:01Z")
I worked for DEC from 1981 to 1999 (although it was Compaq when I left) but most of my career was working on Unix running on VAXen. But we still had some PDP-11s running RSTS/E. There are a number of PDP-11s still out there running. They keep cropping up in the DEC alumni group I’m in, people find them in the oddest places. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/29 "2021-06-29T01:31:45Z")
Wow, this takes me back. I never worked with a PDP-8, but learned to program in the DEC-VAX environment. I got pretty good at DCL scripting, plus the programming languages and DBMS system with which I was working. ---
**Author:** ![ASGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@ASGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/30 "2021-06-29T02:22:41Z")
It’s 1973. I had been in college one year and was allowed access to the printing department PDP-8L computer. It had a hard disc, which I learned was a HUGE deal. Other peripheral devices were a model 33 teletype and a high speed 6-bit paper tape punch. That kind of punch was common in the newspaper industry to run hot metal linotype machines. For you PDP-8 switch guys out there: Load Address 7600 and Start. What a simple machine. I loved it and became assembly conversant. When I graduated I found employment with a company that had licensed the PDP-15 technology. I was hired for my printing education but the company quickly exploited my PDP-8 assembly knowledge for incidental support programming. No learning curve required. ---
**Author:** ![pjd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pjd/32/3009_2.png) [@pjd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pjd)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/31 "2021-06-29T14:15:31Z")
My first job was operating DEC 11/60 & 11/70 running RSTS/E, and several 11/73 (iirc) running DSM MUMPS ! I loved MUMPS. Is “Computer Operator” still a thing ? Happy days. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/32 "2021-06-29T15:20:35Z")
My first experience was the Vax-11/780 there were several in a cluster running VMS. Later the school bought Vax Workstations running VMS. I had one in my office. It ran software for Word Perfect, Lotus that the staff accessed from Dec VT220 Terminals. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/33 "2021-06-29T15:44:58Z")
My experience learning DCL made transitioning to DOS on PC’s easy. I learned directory tree structures from DCL. It’s very similar on a PC. ---
**Author:** ![Karen\_Lingel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karen_lingel/32/18649_2.png) [@Karen\_Lingel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karen_Lingel)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/34 "2021-06-29T17:24:48Z")
Ohhh! I remember computer operators! You would hand them your program’s deck of punch cards, and they would run it for you, and put line printer output (you know, the folded, continuous sheets) in a bin by last name, and you would pick it up a couple hours later. At Fermilab, they also would duplicate our 9-track reel-to-reel tapes, and put the duplicate tapes in the climate-controlled Archive Room. (They did have a robot that would fetch tapes from the archive…) Wow, do I sound about 8000 years old? ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/35 "2021-06-29T17:30:01Z")
> [@Karen\_Lingel](#): > > Wow, do I sound about 8000 years old? Only if you know why you always draw a diagonal line down the side of your stack of punch cards. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/36 "2021-06-29T19:21:30Z")
Even I know that… (52 pickup is even less fun with punchcards than it is with playing cards) ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/37 "2021-06-29T19:56:24Z")
I imagine that distinctive markings on the on the side would also help operators separate out the decks from different jobs after they were run, since the decks from different jobs would typically be stacked together on a long input tray and spit out all together into an output stack – hence the term “batch processing”. But this takes us away from DEC PDP computers. Although card readers and punches were available peripherals for most of them, very few installations had them, since that’s just not how DEC computers were used. A large part of their appeal is that they were either single-user hands-on machines, or else were timeshared. Either way, interaction with DEC computers was typically interactive and real time, and in this respect they differed markedly from IBM’s big iron monsters. This is what makes these console kits so wonderfully nostalgic; in most cases, those of us who worked closely with DEC machines were intimately familiar with the lights and switches. IBM did try their hand at timesharing, but back in the day, systems like TSO (the Time Sharing Option for OS/360) were embarrassingly bad, and little more than JCL commands typed on a terminal. Timesharing was actually pioneered on an IBM 7094 mainframe, but not by IBM; it was done as part of a research project called Project MAC at MIT, and involved custom hardware modifications to the 7094 by MIT engineering staff and a completely new OS developed by MIT research staff. IBM seemed to have little interest in the project, in contrast to DEC and MIT working very closely on numerous projects, establishing DEC as the preferred vendor for academia and research labs. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/38 "2021-06-29T22:07:44Z")
> [@pjd](#): > > Is “Computer Operator” still a thing ? My university (from 1985-1990) used VMS as the primary operating environment for CompSci students. The operator was a real bastard, diabolical. Wish I could remember his name. _Travaglia_, or something … 😉 My first job out of uni was also a VMS shop, on a microVAX. ---
**Author:** ![Karen\_Lingel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karen_lingel/32/18649_2.png) [@Karen\_Lingel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karen_Lingel)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2021, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/39 "2021-06-29T22:13:00Z")
Yes, I remember one computer operator at Fermilab who said “These are MY tapes; I just allow you to put data on them”. I could only blink. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2021, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136/40 "2021-06-30T00:03:29Z")
> [@Karen\_Lingel](#): > > As I remember it (it was 37 years ago) there were 16 switches on the front of the machine, and you set the 16 switches to the bootup address (16 bits), then pushed a button (“Go”? “Boot”? “Enter”? I don’t remember what that button was called.) I don’t remember having to enter more than one address in order to boot up. ROM boot, you lucky person. Reset buttons hadn’t been invented yet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-great-dose-of-nostalgia-for-dec-pdp-8-and-pdp-11-fans/945136.md?page=3)