Now *this* is cool

From: John Tinker <jtinker_at_coin.org>
Date: Tue Aug 7 17:19:36 2001

> At 07:32 PM 8/7/01 +0100, Tony wrote:

> >I am not at all convinced that there will be a time when it will be
> >impossible to keep something like a PDP11 running, either. All the chips
> >in something like an 11/10 or 11/45 are documented. You could, if you had
> >to, re-implement a single chip in an FPGA. Sure it would be a waste of
> >FPGA, but if the time came when you couldn't get (say) a 74S181, and you
> >needed one, that would be a way of keeping the machine operational.

Scarcity is relative to how hard one looks for something. I think a
guy named Simon wrote a thesis about this once. He was talking about
natural resources, and I think sort of overmade his point, due to his
ideological bias against environmentalism. But with regard to chips,
there are bunches of them all over the place, and a diminishing demand
for the ones people on this board would be looking for. They get
harder to find, yes, but they are always still there, somewhere. Greek
and Roman coins, for example, are relatively common.

-- John Tinker
Received on Tue Aug 07 2001 - 17:19:36 BST