building a PDP11 from the things you find at home

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
Date: Thu Jul 26 19:54:27 2001

> Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
> > just how much has been lost to time in the onslaught of Microsoft and Unix
> > (the two worst things to happen to the industry but some might argue about
> > the Unix bit 8-)
>
> At the risk of pandering to a troll, what were/are the alternatives?
>
> I am not interesting in hearing about MS as having had to deal with it
> for 17 years, I've lived why it was a bad thing.
>
> Unix - well fragmentation is the only thing I can think of, which is
> being mirrored in Linux these days.
>
> what alternative(s) was there?

Why do you speak in the past tense? While at work, I do UNIX, at home I use
two *very* good alternatives, OpenVMS and MacOS (ok, so it's turning into
another OS, but I'm not using OS X). There is also Amiga OS, version 3.9
was released a couple months ago. TOS systems are still available new.
Then there are the various non-UNIX OS's that IBM has. Let's not forget the
PDP-11 OS's that are still in active use, and still seeing some development
(nor forget the fact you can still buy new PDP-11's). Shoot, TOPS-20 is
still around on XKL's hardware.

Of all of the above, as many here know, my personal favorite is OpenVMS, and
it's a very real, very good, and very actively developed alternative.

                        Zane
Received on Thu Jul 26 2001 - 19:54:27 BST