[Simh] pdp11 and unix

[Gregg Levine]

Hello!
Let us not forget the ongoing legend that there is one Federal agency
all of us want to see out of business who runs older systems, and in
fact might be using punch cards for their methods of data entry.

And there is still yet another one where the equipment is old enough
to vote, and helps us fly planes everywhere.

I'll leave it as a lesson to the group to figure out who they are.

Hint: Dave W. May already know who the first one is under a different name.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."


On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> On Feb 27, 2016, at 5:49 PM, Dave Wade <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> BTW, I think that plugboard programming, other than for some business
>>> applications with IBM "accounting machines", disappeared rather quickly as
>>> Von Neumann machines appeared.  That too would be interesting to look
>>> for.
>>
>> I am not so sure about that. Older technology often continued in use long after it was produced. In the 50's, 60's and 70's they took the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" paradigm seriously.
>>
>> So IBM punch card accounting machines, complete with plug boards were still in use in 1974 when I did my "Industrial placement" at a Life Insurance Company. I was taught Analog Computer programming, using of course plug boards. Some not so early mini computers used "ferrite core rom" where you dropped a ferrite core into a coil to set a bit.
>
> What I meant by "disappeared" is that they weren't used in newer designs any longer.  Yes, some people kept using old computers for a long time.
>
> One category of core ROM has cores for each bit, with address lines either threaded through the hole for one, or around it for zero.  Presumably you'd do this for fairly modest ROM sizes, otherwise the wire mess would get out of hand.  The EL-X1 had its loader and "BIOS" in that kind of ROM, about 900 words.
>
>         paul
>
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