TRW Report.

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_netcom.com>
Date: Sun Oct 31 13:58:48 1999

   Well, as Marvin and Mike have said, it was pretty good day at TRW,
tho really hot, like summer... I was not expecting to be working up
such a sweat on Halloween. East-coast folks: nyaaah nyaaahh!!! ;}

   It seems it was 'freebie' day yesterday... my most striking gift
was a large box of 3/4" U-matic video tapes (13 of them) put out by
Digital, titled 'The VAX-11 Instruction Set' They are of course a
a video tutorial on that subject. I popped the first one into the
player last night and it put me straight to sleep... they are the
typical mid-80s hideously boring industrial instruction format..
the graphics of a school film and voice-over by some un-inflected
perfect-diction guy who pronounces mnemonic as 'newmunik'... but it
is still a cool find. I think when DVD software gets a little
cheaper it would be a good candidate for archival on that format.

  TO clarify Mike Ford's previous post... the DEC item in question
was a PDT-11 (not PDP) with two other raw Shugart 8" drives. There
were several other old PCs and some removable HD docking chassis,
but I did rescue the PDT and now it lives here. Thanks Mike!!

  Another listmember delivered several boxes of Good Stuff to me, of
interest to The List would be 2 VT-240s, a Wyse terminal, and a box
of 5 1/4" floppies full of vintage PC software.. which I *think*
Marvin stole from the back of my truck... better him than me.

  Mike sold me a rack-mount Pentium 133 machine which I plan to use
as networking box to talk between my PDP-11s and uVAXs and the more
modern world... oh goodie... another Project.

  Marvin, Mike Ford, Dave Dameron, Aaron Finney [+ three Child
Processes he has spawned], and Elliot all came to visit.. several of
us then went to Brunch, tho Mike and Dave got lost and Aaron was
otherwise occupied [ ;) ] so Marvin and I just talked trash about you
guys over chow. Some non-classiccmp friends of mine were there also,
as I was sharing one of my spaces with our local Ham repeater group,
so they could sell some jun^H^H^H^H 'Merchandise' and raise money for
upgrades, which they did.

  All-in-all a very fun time in SoCal.

 ---------------------------------------------

  Questions for the List:

 Anyone ever use these instruction videos? I'm interested in your
opinions if you remember the tapes at all.

  I recall a thread or two revolving around the PDT-11... before I
go slogging back thru the archives.. can someone give me a capsule
description of the PDT-11 and where it fit in the DEC scheme of things?


   Cheers

John
Received on Sun Oct 31 1999 - 13:58:48 GMT