I Bought the HEAVIEST Computer on eBay: The PDP-11/34!

Comments · 1.8K

• PO

  @postiemania · 2 years ago

  50 year old Computer and there is an expert on the net to help you fix it.....amazing.

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• RE

  @Remowylliams · 2 years ago

  It's scary to remember so many operational facts about these computers. In the early 80's I got hired by a 3rd party DEC service provider as a bench technician fixing VT-100 terminals. After fixing all the broken terminals on hand. I turned to work on our 11/40 test bench machine which had been down for nearly a year prior to my arrival. I taught myself how to repair and operate the machine and in 9 months became the company's senior field technician. As long as I had test equipment, schematics and coffee I fixed most everything I was thrown at. Floppy Drives, Hard Drives, Tape Drives, serial controllers, line printers, power supplies. These machines had modular switching power supplies that would fail pretty frequently. I built electronic dummy loads that dissipated power through 2N3055's strapped to massive heatsinks with fans blowing on them. It was a great time working with these work horses. Thanks for the memories. I'll watch any PDP-11 video you put up. Cheers.

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• MU

  @mushroomsamba82 · 2 years ago

  When you need an engine hoist to move your computer you know you've made it.

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• WI

  @wizardpb · 2 years ago

  In Sept 1978 I started a PhD - the day I started, my supervisor showed me into a newly constructed computer room, false floor and all, and showed me a brand new PDP 11/34. He handed me a 9-track tape, and a single piece of paper. He said: "This is Unix Version 6 - please get it running on this machine". On the piece of paper: the tape deck bootstrap, all in octal.... 46 years later, I'm now retired. Ah. memories....

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• WA

  @wa4aos · 2 years ago

  PLEASE more DEC ANYTHING. I was with DEC for years from PDP 8 series through most of the VAX series. I know these systems frail to most simple systems now in some ways but the evolution of DEC over the years was amazing. I am happy and honored to have been part of the excitement.<br>In case you may be interested Ken Olsen did everything to keep the payroll running even when times were tough and we did have some lean times. He made some errors in judgement by not getting in the PC biz earlier but there were no crystal balls then and as they say, it is what is &nbsp;or was, as the case may be. <br>Thanks for keeping some of the DEC gear going and preserving the tech on your super neat YouyTube channel !!!

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• WA

  @waslucena · 2 years ago

  In the 2000s, the Rio de Janeiro metro was still running on PDP-11 systems. There were five PDP-11s for ticketing and four for the automatic pilot system. In ticketing, one PDP-11 acted as a supervisor, selecting which of the two controllers for the turnstiles would be the master and which would be the slave. The other two PDP-11s, along with four tape units, recorded the data from each ticket passage. Each PDP-11s had 96K words of memory. <br><br>Motorola developed a specific serial communication chip to connect the central system to each entry turnstile, as the distance was over 30 km/18 mi. The PDP-11s for the automatic pilot system allowed for acceleration and braking at stations without human interference. <br><br>Access at the turnstiles was through magnetic stripe cards. The turnstile would read the card and send the data to the PDP-11s, where the cards were validated. If they were multi-trip cards, one trip would be deducted. If the card&apos;s trip credit was exhausted, the PDP would instruct the turnstile to retain the card. Otherwise, the PDP would send a command to rewrite the card with the trip deducted.<br><br>The project was developed by the French company Alstom in the 1970s, and the metro was inaugurated in 1979.<br><br><br>It&apos;s incredible to think that all this was still running in 2000, and the cost of a technological upgrade involving the replacement of all the turnstiles and PDPs was not deemed worthwhile.

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• DM

  @dmacpher · 2 years ago

  Sort by “heaviest” is really an under appreciated feature

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• SP

  @SpeZi-tr6gr · 2 years ago

  Vintage computer and a muscle car in the garage. Guy&apos;s livin&apos; my dream. Well done sir, well done!

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• FI

  @fixinah · 2 years ago

  If it reboots in less than 30 minutes it&apos;s not a computer, it&apos;s a toy. - Old bearded man I used to work with at Scania in 2010.

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• ET

  @ethandicks3 · 2 years ago

  Glad I&apos;ve been able to help. &nbsp;The PDP-11 is a fantastic machine and it&apos;s great to see (another) one come back to life.

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• JE

  @JeoshuaCollins · 2 years ago

  &quot;Brand new PDP-11&quot;<br>I laughed for a good 2 minutes.

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• NO

  @notthatyouasked6656 · 1 year ago

  I was a DEC contractor for a while circa 1995-96. &nbsp;When my first contract ended, I picked up another gig with a group that was, at the time, based in The Mill, the long time HQ for DEC in Maynard, Mass. &nbsp;I worked in The Mill for a week before we transferred elsewhere because The Mill was in the process of closing. &nbsp;So not only was I briefly a &quot;Mill rat&quot;, I was one of the last ones.<br><br>I started on DEC equipment in high school around 1976. &nbsp;We had dialup timeshare with a county-owned DECsystem 10 shared by 20 or so schools. &nbsp;I then worked on the county PDP 11/70 until graduation. &nbsp;In college we had a DECsystem 20 that had the horribly slow DEC 10 emulator. &nbsp;I also used an 11/20 in my workstudy job. &nbsp;<br><br>Long ago, but in some ways seems like yesterday, especially when I see videos like this.

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