[Simh] pdp11 and unix

[Eric Smith]

My goodness, Johnny, you are my hero.  You, sir, lived my dream ..!!


> On Feb 26, 2016, at 6:33 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
> 
> Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't mind the postings and the comments. I just want to try and understand what you mean by them, and try to put things into perspective, both from your side and mine.
> 
> We're about the same age. But I was actually exposed (through computer clubs) to PDP-11 systems at an early age, for which we had no software, so we had to start from scratch by writing some silly monitor on paper, and put it in on the front panel, and eventually got to a point where it could be saved to tape, so we could boot it, and do some very simple things through that.
> Of course, we also had core, so we had the software around in memory, unless we accidentally corrupted memory as well.
> 
> I pretty much avoided the whole microcomputer revolution, since I already had started playing with minis, and found them so much more interesting and fun than micros... Having PDP-11s to play with both at school and clubs, and eventually having my own PDP-8 systems at home in the mid 80s, not to mention hanging out at University at night, when "normal" students weren't around, to play on the PDP-10 systems there, and connecting across the atlantic using IMPs, and god knows all the weird stuff one was doing...
> 
> And most OSes back then were written in assembler. Unix was more of the exception.
> 
> 	Johnny
>