Digital DEC PDP-11 - Disc Packs, Tape Drives and Terminals!
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- We talk to Bryan, an awesome volunteer at the Centre for Computing History about the PDP-11 computers that have been donated to the museum. Bryan will be getting them up and running and on display ...
Sweet! The early part of my career was on PDP-11s and VAXs. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
I used to work on PDP-11 s. They were used for process monitoring on oil rigs and were connected up to sensors throughout the rig. When they broke down I had to fly out to the rig and fix the problem. The last incarnation, an LSI-11/73 in a ruggedised "Sigma" chassis, was replaced by industrial PCs around 2000.
Brings back memories of working on a PDP-11/04 in grad school in 1976. It ran RT-11 and controlled an MTS servo-hydraulic fatigue test machine. What a great time that was! No fancy video terminal, either; we had a DECwriter printer terminal that used reams of striped sprocket paper.
Fond memories of these, one system had an attached non-DEC tape drive. I worked alongside a guy called Denis, known to all as Den - he (or we) could put in a 6250 tape and the LCD on the front would say "HI DEN", always made me chuckle
3:15 There was a button-pressing sequence on those streaming tape drives that allowed loading the tape with the door open. It was 4-5-3-3-5.
That was naughty! I never told my clerical staff that - they may have tried it....
The RL02 drive has an issue. The READY light should be off as long as no cartridge is loaded or not up to speed. The READY light should only be lit after the drive has actually found track 0 by reading it! But it is a great video to watch
This was the first computer i programmed professionally back in 1988 .. exciting times!! We used them to process 3420 round reels. They were connected to COM (Computer Output Microfiche) recorders.
If you actually want to see what's on the terminal, this is the most maddening video EVER! It looks like a video shot by someone who can't actually read.
what, you didn't want extreme closeups of the lower-right pixels of individual characters?
Yeah, I was like, "I hope someone comes back and shoots this decently, soon; not so close and shaky so much of the time!" And then I was surprised to see somewhat of a pro-looking logo slapped onto the end of it.
Wow, a Micro PDP-11/73. Those are very rare nowadays. Although I have started with computers in the late 70s, I have never actually worked on PDP-11's or VAXen. I was mostly on UNIX back in those days - just not on the machines, it was initially written on :)
Luckily, nowadays you can have some (cheap) fun with emulators and FPGAs. I have a PDP-11/70 mini-replica using the PiDP-11 with a FPGA PDP2011.
Great to see the old Pdp11 mashine.
I remember my first programs on it at the university..
So long ago...
Never saw the computer so close.
I worked only at the terminals.
Thanks for the nice video
Did my Apprenticeship in Westinghouse! Nice to see these again, brings back memories!
Brings back memories, I worked on those systems and repaired those tape drives but OEM models. Scarriest thing is adjusting heads on a old CDC removable 9766. Fujitsu Eagles were much more reliable units.
Fantastic stuff!!! Very, very good!! Very nice!!!
That bloke must be screaming inside, "don't try to open that fucking flap!"
Yeah, he needs to stand back and stop fingerpoken and watch das blinkenlights
Tape drive in a draw may sound clever, and it takes up less space. But when the tech has to figure out why a tape will not load they lose their first most valuable troubleshooting tool, observation ! PDP-11/45 was my favorite machine to work on as a tech. And knowing it as well as I do provided me with a fun career. DEC BADGE # 7636. By the way, I have a DEC magtape of the ASCII images from 1974 or so. Don't know which computer museum to send it to. Including Spock holding the Enterprise model.
the central unit itself is shockingly small compared to the rest of the stuff... it's about the same size as a full sized desktop computer nowadays. Would I be correct in my assumption that this was one of the latest generations and that initial models were much larger?
No not really. DEC made a standard cabinet and all of the drives and cpu box fit in that cabinet profile. Everything was stackable. The VAX line used a different cabinet which was wider and shorter but for the most part, what you see here would have handled PDP8's along with all their devices. If the devices like tape drives were added, they had their own cabinet as they had the actual tape drive and then a controller that sat under the tape drive. The tape drive would be the size of that white one in the video and then the controller was about the size of a small suit case. TM02 and TM03 were the tape drive controllers for the half inch tape drives.
The numbnuts in Admin decided that the HDDs on the mainframes could be used with commercial grade helium (=ballon gas).
6 hours later we were called out to recover the system - head crash on the oil droplets in the gas....
Another sample of pointy headed bosses! We worked with the DEC engineer to set up a makeshift clean room (the air locker to the men's toilet, sealed and pressurised), cleaned and transferred contents of disks. Moral of the story - Trust your Technicians and Engineers....
This comment gave me so much to think about. I didn't know they utilized helium in this manner. I did notice that some of these drives had various vacuum pump arrangements but didn't know what provisions were made for disks.
A quick google search comes up with very regent HDD models which employ helium to help increase data density. Which leads me to suspect that such drives do not have a breather hole to supply the "air bearing."
That looks like 2 eagle winchester drives in the bottom rack
My experience was with a Data General Eclipse MV9600 running AOS/VS II.
Me too. Also running CEO
my computer instructor for compsci 101 showed us the removable hard drives .
Cool 👍🏻
Are those CPU units essentially what they also sold as standalone micros, ie the DECstations/VAXstations and Rainbows? It seems kinda unusual to have a rackmount mini with either a twin floppy or a small form factor HDD built into it rather than in separate modules, let alone both...
Yo word, I was thinking similarly. By the looks of it, the floppy drive(s) totally reminded me of a the DEC Rainbow. Never used one or seen it in the flesh, though I once met a guy who had one. I could never forget what the floppy drive on the Rainbow looked like; it was so unique with it's dual slot in as single unit design. Which I would consider to be a bit annoying if I was an owner back in the day. What if I wanted a a single 5.25" and a 3.5" stacked instead? No bueno. Oh well, can't ditch this exotic styled drive, better use an external!
Ha, "CPU unit"? There's no such thing.
That large tape drive I do not believe DEC made. The large half inch tape drives were the TU10, TE16 and then the TU77 and TU78. They ran under vacuum columns. I built many of them.
Then of course you have the ESE20 which was DEC's offering of a solid state drive in the size of that cabinet. Super fast. Again, I either built or tested every ESE20 they sold. Fun times. Now get a hold of an RP04 and you have something. Multiple platters, it was a beast like the size of a washing machine but once the lid was closed it was glass and you could actually watch the disk pack spin up. Those were the days.
The TS05 tape drive was rebadged by DEC. Can’t recall who actually made it. It would stream but RSX didn’t support that function on that device.
VT220! We all wanted a 220 instead of a big old VT100 back then!
Yeah, the early VT100 series had a clunky & somewhat basic setup facility, the VT220/3/4* series were infinitely better & almost PC-like in their ease of configuration. VT100s were still better than awful serial terminals like ADDS Viewpoint etc
Did some serious time on it and the Vax as well. We all had our own tapes. Some folks would get very pissed it you'd forgotten to take them out she you were done.
But PDP-11 is only half the info, what is the number following the 11 as in PDP-11/34 or PDP-11/70? And most of my experience was on a PDP-11/70 running RSTS/E, then I moved to a Data General MV9600 running AOS/VS II.
I think near the beginning of the video they identify it as a PDP-11/73, a later derivation of the PDP-11/70 family (a bit more miniaturization).
Wow. The PDP11 processor-unit looks exactly like a MicroVAX-II laying horisontal.
These are MicroPDP-11's with VLSI CPU's rather than "proper" PDP's and like the MicroVAXen came in a number of different enclosures from pedestal to rackmount. I visited the CCH recently but unfortunately this machine was not on display. Perhaps they had problems with it.
I’ve been there. It’s a cool place
DEC TS05
TAPE RELAY DRIVE
LOADS A BIG TAPE
SIZED LIKE PIZZA
The TS05 sometimes automatically loads itself up.
~2:20 "Being a 16-bit machine, they would had suffered originally from the Y2K bug" ..... A very odd statement trying to link Y2K and a 16-bit architecture. Y2K was due to encoding dates with only the 00..99 years without concern for the preceding century 2-digits. It could have been an 8,16,32,64.... it makes no difference to whether it was Y2K proof. It probably was not Y2K proof, but that was nothing to do with it being a 16-bit CPU
havent seen that type of media in years .
PLEASE learn to use that camera. Find out how close it can focus, then hold it still!! Crappy camerawork spoiled what could have been a mice video.
How could this have been a mice video if computers didn't have mice in those days?
video was fine. Nothing better to whinge about ?
Engineering Art.The destruction of Digital was a business crime.
hypothetically speaking; how do i download all of bandcamp and pandora and how much hard drive space do i need
Cooler, but too much fast explanations
Those tape drives are not unlike what the floppy disk has become to the modern PC. hehe
Noooooo, you ruined the video with that intolerable image stabilization thing. Please reupload.
Just turned off the you tube image stabilisation thing for you. It did make a mess of it didn't it!! Lesson learned :)