1980s Computer Throwback

[TheKrell]

I'm betting you're actually thinking of a PDP-8. The PDP-20 was relabeled as the DECStation 20 before release.

I used a PDP-8/L with 4K of RAM in high school. It didn't have any disk capacity at all. Everything was stored in RAM and when it was turned off, everything was lost.

This is my memory of the PDP-8. One of my classmates could actually paddle in the bootstrap from memory!

The last time I saw a PDP-8/L, it was part of an retired scoreboard setup in a university's main gym ("Slats" Gill Coliseum at Oregon State University).

View attachment 155988

Oh wow. I haven't thought of a PDP-8 since... Ah... 1990's some time. Our secretaries all had PDP-8's embedded in a dedicated word processor which name escapes me. IIRC it had another odd word size: 12-bits. I inherited several of those when we moved out of our lovely old futuristic FCRC building in McLean, VA and into a boring run-of-the-mill 6 story block in Vienna, VA. I also inherited a bunch of DEC bidirectional daisy-wheel printers. Both the printers and the PDP-8's were built like tanks.

I do believe my research data-capture computer was a PDP 11/20. It just said "Programmed Data Processor" on the front, so I may have gotten the number part wrong. We also had a bunch of PDP 11/45's and my personal favorite, the PDP 11/34. I see I left the "11/" off above. Sorry about that. Failing memory.

 

[mdonnelly]

Personal computers or home computers were not the original tool. This was especially true of the Vic-20 with its 22 column text mode.

Long before the Vic-20 and Apple ][ were CRT-based terminals from Hazeltine, Televideo and teletypes like the ubiquitous Teletype Model 33.

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You need to think much harder about what you claim because it just isn't making any sense from a logical or historical perspective.

Ah, 8-level paper tape! Some of the Air Force old timers said that they could read the punched tape. Of course, the same guys said that they could also read the magnetic mylar tape when these were replaced.

 

[TheKrell]

Ah, 8-level paper tape! Some of the Air Force old timers said that they could read the punched tape. Of course, the same guys said that they could also read the magnetic mylar tape when these were replaced.

Of course some of us really could read that stupid punched tape. I could even translate binary 7-bit numbers (in ASCII) to the characters they represented, with reference to a table.

 

[navychop]

With magnetic “dust” and a magnifying glass, I’ll bet they could!

 

[Juan]

Nobody ever considered a vic 20 a pc..it was more of a game machine

 

[harshness]

Must have been a CDC something or other.

A CDC Cyber 7600 in fact (although 7700 sticks in my mind). Multiple opcodes (sometimes accompanied by data) were stored in each word. Text was stored at 10 characters per word.

 

[harshness]

Nobody ever considered a vic 20 a pc..it was more of a game machine

Yet somehow you tried to slip it in as a viable terminal for a mainframes and/or that it was involved in the genesis of social media.

Compuserve probably made a bigger contribution to early social media than Usenet.

 

[Juan]

Yet somehow you tried to slip it in as a viable terminal for a mainframes and/or that it was involved in the genesis of social media.

Compuserve probably made a bigger contribution to early social media than Usenet.

Never said it was a viable terminal..back then the only viable terminal would have been an x terminal

 

[TheKrell]

Yet somehow you tried to slip it in as a viable terminal for a mainframes and/or that it was involved in the genesis of social media.

Yeah, I used the DECmate (thanks Google!) with the PDP8 inside as a terminal to my VAX at work. And also to Compuserve.

Compuserve probably made a bigger contribution to early social media than Usenet.

Long before anybody at home had anything better than dialup Internet, and didn't really know what you could use it for, I wrote several columns in a technical magazine entitled, "The Internet by Email". Back then, people made gateways between email and Usenet, ftp, the www, and several other Internet facilities which names escape me at the moment. And I used Compuserve for my email provider.

 

[Juan]

Yeah, I used the DECmate (thanks Google!) with the PDP8 inside as a terminal to my VAX at work. And also to Compuserve.

Long before anybody at home had anything better than dialup Internet, and didn't really know what you could use it for, I wrote several columns in a technical magazine entitled, "The Internet by Email". Back then, people made gateways between email and Usenet, ftp, the www, and several other Internet facilities which names escape me at the moment. And I used Compuserve for my email provider.

Something similar to telnet probably

 

[harshness]

Never said it was a viable terminal..back then the only viable terminal would have been an x terminal

X Windows wasn't a thing until the early 1990s so I doubt the X terminals were popular until well after the Amiga A4000 came onto the scene.

 

[Juan]

X Windows wasn't a thing until the early 1990s so I doubt the X terminals were popular until well after the Amiga A4000 came onto the scene.

You never worked for the phone company

 

[TheKrell]

Something similar to telnet probably

I've been racking my brain for the other early Internet applications I wrote about. Wasn't there a file indexing program whose name started with a G? Text based. Obliterated by the WWW which included pictures.

 

[Juan]

I've been racking my brain for the other early Internet applications I wrote about. Wasn't there a file indexing program whose name started with a G? Text based. Obliterated by the WWW which included pictures.

Something similar to prodigy?

Prodigy (online service) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Juan]

Or this

Gemini (protocol) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[harshness]

You never worked for the phone company

I was on the other side -- the Oregon PUC.

The "phone company" probably didn't get or use X Windows any sooner than the workstation manufacturers.

X Windows (and the hardware environment it operated in) were developed as part of Project Athena at MIT. While IBM and DEC was involved, Bell Labs was not a big contributor.

Sounds like you weren't working at the phone factory then either.

 

[harshness]

Or this

Gemini (protocol) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you had read further in the article that you linked to, you would have discovered that Gemini is a little over two years old. Certainly not an example.

 

[harshness]

I've been racking my brain for the other early Internet applications I wrote about. Wasn't there a file indexing program whose name started with a G? Text based. Obliterated by the WWW which included pictures.

You're almost certainly thinking of Gopher.

 

[TheKrell]

Something similar to prodigy?

Prodigy (online service) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I never subscribed to Prodigy. But IIRC it was a competitor to Compuserve, to which i did subscribe.

Or this

Gemini (protocol) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ha! It wasn't Gemini. But your wikipedia link mentioned Gopher, and that was it.

You're almost certainly thinking of Gopher.

Right on. Thank you. I can now sleep at night.

 

[TheKrell]

I found more references to Gopher, as well as Veronica and WAIS, all 3 of which I used in the early 90's and may have written about in my articles.

Gopher, The Competing Standard To WWW In The ’90s Is Still Worth Checking Out

The 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web passed earlier this year. Naturally, this milestone was met with truckloads of nerdy fanfare and pining for those simpler times. In three decades, the Web…

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