Forgot your password?
Cyhist Apr 16 1997 B
Document Actions
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 10:32:09 -0400
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Leslie Pearson <lespea@MUZE.COM>
Subject: CM> Preserving a Dec-20
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
Peter da Silva <peter@BAILEYNM.COM> wrote:
All well and good, but we're talking about machines barely old enough to be obsolete. They're not antiques. They're not the systems that really need to be preserved NOW, while there's time. They need the EDSAC emulator, they need the 1620s and the PDP-1s and even things like Sixth Edition UNIX on a PDP-11, teletypes and flexowriters and card punches. IBM 360s and DECSystem-20s and Unisys 1100s and Honeywell 6000 series boxes...
It's nice to see a DecSystem20 in there! Since that was my first multiuser computer, I have a special fondness for that one. I used it at Worcester Polytechnic Institute 1980 (when it and I were freshman) to 1984. I wonder what ever happened to it? For its time, it had a nice user interface with command completion, something even MSDOS doesn't have to this day.
If you started to type a command an escape would complete the command or a ? would show you all the options.
Leslie Pearson
lespea@muze.com
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Leslie Pearson <lespea@MUZE.COM>
Subject: CM> Preserving a Dec-20
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
Peter da Silva <peter@BAILEYNM.COM> wrote:
All well and good, but we're talking about machines barely old enough to be obsolete. They're not antiques. They're not the systems that really need to be preserved NOW, while there's time. They need the EDSAC emulator, they need the 1620s and the PDP-1s and even things like Sixth Edition UNIX on a PDP-11, teletypes and flexowriters and card punches. IBM 360s and DECSystem-20s and Unisys 1100s and Honeywell 6000 series boxes...
It's nice to see a DecSystem20 in there! Since that was my first multiuser computer, I have a special fondness for that one. I used it at Worcester Polytechnic Institute 1980 (when it and I were freshman) to 1984. I wonder what ever happened to it? For its time, it had a nice user interface with command completion, something even MSDOS doesn't have to this day.
If you started to type a command an escape would complete the command or a ? would show you all the options.
Leslie Pearson
lespea@muze.com
______________________________________________________________________
