Trivia Question

From: ben franchuk <bfranchuk_at_jetnet.ab.ca>
Date: Sat Feb 22 11:22:01 2003

Jim Battle wrote:

> If you were to time travel to 1970 and find a lab using a PDP-8 doing
> some kind of computational work, and ask them if they'd want to trade it
> in for a 3 GHz PC that you brought back with you from the future, I have
> no doubt that they'd take the PC and they'd find a way to make it work,
> despite the I/O and software differences.

The 8 don't crash! The 8 has auto-restart mode. The 8 has non-volatile
memory and real time OS. If the 8 is running lab equiment it still
out performs the PC. And it even can be repaired.


> I've had the discussion with workmates about the following scenario. If
> the German forces had access to a single 5150 IBM PC back in 1940, would
> the war have ended very differently? I think it would have. Now we
> dismiss that much computational power as inconsequential.

I read a Short story where instead of WWII Germany developed time
travel.The end of the story had WWII happen because time travel
was a dead end path for mankind.The computer came too late in the war
to change much for germany and most people capable of understanding the
use of a computer had left the country or made the moral choice not to
develop computers for the war effort.


> Ignoring all of that, why are you bringing up the PDP-8 and -11 in the
> context of computers that weigh under 1 kg?


It is the I/O and other stuff that is heavy.0's and 1's don't weigh a much:)
Ben.
Received on Sat Feb 22 2003 - 11:22:01 GMT