Oldest computer still in current use

From: Brian Chase <vaxzilla_at_jarai.org>
Date: Sun May 11 17:15:00 2003

On Sun, 11 May 2003, Pierre Gebhardt wrote:

> Additional question:
> Can the PDP-11 be connected to the internet ?
> What about TCP/IP ?

Starting in the early 1980s, a lot of the development of TCP/IP was
done using PDP-11 based systems running David Mills' Fuzzball software.
The Fuzzballs also played a very prominent roll in the NSFnet backbone.

There's also the PDP-11 based 2BSD distribution which supports TCP/IP
networking on a variety of PDP-11 models. The latest release, 2.11BSD,
supports systems as old as the PDP-11/70 model, which was first
introduced in early 1975.

I don't know if there are TCP/IP stacks available for OSes like RSX-11
or RSTS-11, which might run on some of the older PDP-11s. I do see that
there's one for RT-11, but it only supports the Q-bus DEQNA ethernet
module which would have to be used with more recent systems (late 70s
through 1980s). Were there support for the Unibus DEUNA adapter, you
could probably run it on something like an 11/45 from 1972.

There are also the original Arpanet IMPs, based on the Honeywell H516
(the systems were introduced the mid to late 1960s), but they only ran
the Arpanet precursor to TCP/IP.

-brian.
Received on Sun May 11 2003 - 17:15:00 BST