Catching up on the news and views from the past week. Dave tells a wee story in Scripting News

Most of you are probably too young to remember this. Come sit on my knee and I'll tell you a story.

Back in the Old Days real men programmed computers by entering code using switches on the front panel of the computer itself...

I remember those days. In fact my first hands-on (personal) computer was a PDP-8 [1]. And my all time favourite game as Lunar Lander on a venerable PDP-11 [2] with a GT-40 [3] graphics display. Old or what ;-) !?

[1] TCMHC: Internet History 1962 - 1992

DEC unveils the PDP-8, the first commercially successful minicomputer. Small enough to sit on a desktop, it sells for $18,000 - one-fifth the cost of a low-end IBM/360 mainframe. The combination of speed, size, and cost enables the establishment of the minicomputer in thousands of manufacturing plants, offices, and scientific laboratories.

[2] TCMHC: Internet History 1962 - 1992

DEC announces the Unibus for its PDP-11 minicomputers to allow the addition and integration of myriad computer-cards for instrumentation and communications.

[3] PDP-11 Family - Jay Jaeger

The GT40 was a graphic system, often used as a graphic terminal for DEC's PDP-10 and PDP-20 mainframe systems. The CPU was a PDP-11/05, but used the green color scheme of DEC's graphic systems rather than the magenta color scheme normally found on PDP-11's. The GT-40's main claim to fame is probably the famous Lunar Lander game, written by Jack Burness, as a consultant to Digital at the time.

I noticed that Jay Jaeger went to University of Wisconsin:PDP-11 Family - Jay Jaeger

I cut my teeth on Unix on a PDP-11/45 system at the University of Wisconsin in 1976 along with my friends Paul and Hannes (among others).

I wonder if he is a contemporary of Dave Winer who, if I'm not mistaken, also went to Wisconsin in that timeframe. It's a small world!!

Update: Dave e-mailed me: We were at UW at the same time but I didn't know him. I was in Computer Science and he was in EE. Dave also had access to PDPs as 'personal' computers. It is a small world!