From: frank@rover.uchicago.edu (Frank - Hardware Hacker - Borger)
Subject: Re: What is so greate about the PDP 10?
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Reply-To: frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Organization: Joint Center for Radiation Therapy
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 17:06:00 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.034118.20850@netsys.com>, bugs@netsys.com (Mark Hittinger) writes...
>peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> 
>>Crowing that the -11 users are finally getting their comeuppance is sad:
>>I'm an -11 fan and even I think DEC has kept it alive (or been forced to
>>keep it alive) way longer than I ever expected.
> 
	No, DEC keeps supporting it because DEC still makes money doing so.
	I can still buy parts for a 20-year-old RK05, stock, out of DEC's
	electronic store. Long as the machines are reliable, economically
	viable units, people will use them and buy CPUs and parts.

	Also note that although DEC no longer sells PDP8's, they still sell
	parts, and there is still a reasonable trade in used 8's and parts.
	Again because there are enough out there still being used.

	Sadly for the 10's and 20's they really took up too much valuable
	real-estate and power. Probably the real killer was lack of enough
	trained service people to keep them running.

>We were checking used prices the other day and noticed that the used
>price of the vax8650 had fallen below that of the used high end pdp-11.
> 
>I'm waiting for my favorite PDP-11 groupie to call me up and give me
>some crap about that (I committed the foul deed of converting to, learning,
>managing, and advocating Vaxes).  Oh well - I'll just ask him when he thinks
>he can port WNT to the 11! 

	Course not. But I've got applications that were written on a PDP11,
	work well on a PDP11, but go into turtle mode when ported to an
	already overloaded VAX. If I can do the same thing on a VAX and a
	PDP11, but the PDP11 gives me better response, (because everyone
	thinks our 750 is a much hotter box than or 11/44, and therefore
	writes large programs that go crunch, crunch, crunch on large amounts
	of data...) and we pay about $15,000/year VAX service, versus about
	$800/year buying parts of the surplus market for the PDP11, should
	I port everything.
> 
>are we going to be able to get a KL emulator before 1999?
> 
>"you can hack anything you want - with TECO and DDT!"

	I can still hack on the 11 quite easily. (My definition of hack is
	that a simple basic or fortran program can directly talk to the
	mag-tape driver to tell it to write an eof or do a backspace, or
	can stuff a command line buffer and execute any system cusp.)

	Sadly, I can't hack easily on the VAX. The hacks are there, but
	I have to deal with syntax up the wazoo, f$lexical(so's_your_old_man)
	a grey wall, (used to be orange,) of manuals, and a general climate
	such that I tend to issue a command of set process/priv=potty before
	I go to the bathroom.

   Frank R. Borger - Physicist    __       Internet:  Frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Michael Reese - Univ. of Chicago |___      Phone : 312-791-8075 fax : 567-7455
  Center for Radiation Therapy   | |_) _   In the first place God made idiots.
                                   | \|_)  That was for practice. Then he made
    "Birthplace of Softball"          |_)  school boards. - Mark Twain
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