
The Core Memory Module from my dad’s homebuilt PDP-11/05 - shawndumas
http://porkrind.org/missives/the-core-memory-module-from-my-dads-homebuilt-pdp-1105/
======
mb_72
Likely falling on the 'old' side of the spectrum of posters here, I can't help
but feel quite sentimental when I see these kind of articles - and regret,
once again, that I wasn't born earlier so I could a) participate in the 'when
it was still fun' age of computer hardware development and b) be retired by
now!

~~~
ChuckMcM
Trust me, computers are more fun now.

But if you would like to experiment with computer architectures, you can get
something like the Altera DE-2 [1] and play around with really crazy sauce
kinds of things, n-way associative cache with CAM register banks and dynamic
register renaming? No problemo! And you do it all without soldering or wire-
wrapping or anything. I have some PDP-8's and I love them dearly, but it is
soo much easier doing stuff on an Arduino than a PDP-8/e.

[1]
[http://www.altera.com/education/univ/materials/boards/de2/un...](http://www.altera.com/education/univ/materials/boards/de2/unv-
de2-board.html)

~~~
abruzzi
Computers can do more now, but relative to expectations of the time, computers
were more fun then because they were new. I had more fun with my Apple //e and
later Amiga 1000 than I have ever had with an iPhone, because expectations
were lower, and just moving a sprite across the screen was impressive.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Whose expectations? Yours or someone else's ? Were _computers_ new or where
_you_ new to computers?

So I went through an interesting series of transformations, first I was amazed
about everything 'computer', I built my own Z80 machine, I ran through all of
the languages that the mainframe the highschool had access too, I wrote games,
"operating systems", computer languages, and various diversions just for fun.
All the way through to about the mid-90's when I started working on the system
that would become Java. The new stuff was fun, Sun's politics were soul
crushing. I lost my sense of 'wonder' about doing cool things. It took me a
while, wandering in the desert to realize that I was piling up all of these
negative experiences against something I loved doing (systems design). I
discovered it could be way fun to bring VMS up on an old VAX and show it off,
to demonstrate active/active fail-over clustering on something as 'stupid' as
a proprietary SCSI bus. The reason that was fun and 'regular' computers were
not (to me at least) was that regular computers represented 'work' and 'the
man' but these other computers were untainted. I committed myself to re-
invigorating my 'wonder' and haven't looked back since.

------
shanelja
Personally I don't know the difference between a chipset and a plate of chips,
but even with my limited knowledge I can tell instantly that a tremendous
amount of work went in to building this. Kudos to your dad.

------
asadjb
I don't have much to say about the technical aspects of this, since the first
computer I used came with DOS and Dave!

But, your dad is an awesome and patient man...

------
ck2
Can you imagine having to debug that wirewrap.

I wonder what technologies from today will look like 40 years from now as we
compare 1974 to 2013.

~~~
linker3000
In the early 1980s I was doing an electronic engineering apprenticeship and
was tasked with wirewrapping a backplane for part of a flight simulator. It
was a big panel - a stand-up job to do the work - and it took me the best part
of a week to lay out and wrap all the wires and it was with great joy that I
passed the panel to the electrical inspector for examination and testing.

A day or so later, back came the inspector with a grin on his face and he said
"I have some good news and some bad news..."

"The good news is that your panel has passed acceptance testing" - Yay!

"The bad news is - they come in pairs..." :-(

