Another PDP-11 available: Wisconsin

From: Jerome Fine <jhfine_at_idirect.com>
Date: Wed Oct 11 09:54:33 2000

>ajp166 wrote:

> On the other hand the posting was rather strong. There is nothing
> wrong with an 11/2. True an 11/23 has more oomph and all but an
> 11/2 is configurable as a very nice small machine. Paying 100$
> for one is questionable in my mind on because they were so
> common (over 100,000 cpu boards made). I have a few.

Jerome Fine replies:

I have a few as well - and if I can ever find someone to actually use
them, they will go for free. I can't ever remember actually using
one although I might have attempted to test one just to see if
it would work - in hindsight, I don't know why since I never
had any intention of getting by with just RT11FB in RT-11.
Actually, I have both versions - dual and quad.

This is not a slight on those who like hardware far more than
I do, just my own opinion - which I believe I stated at the beginning.
The key point is that when testing software, the emulator is so
much faster that it runs rings around the real hardware. PLUS -
and this is a VERY BIG PLUS - I had occasion to attempt
to debug (or at least understand) the boot code for a stand alone
program. Try stepping through the boot block of an RX02 on
a real PDP-11. With the emulator and even rudimentary
[Thank goodness for the spell checker!!] debugging facilities
(only one break point address - but at least single step was
enabled), it was trivial - after all, there was only a single block
of code to debug.

In fact, I very much admire someone who can rescue an 11/44
from the scrap heap. But I do not know how and I am too busy
in any case. And my back is no longer strong enough.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
Received on Wed Oct 11 2000 - 09:54:33 BST