How everything started – My way to the PDP-11 – MES021

Holy moly, seems I'm getting old. Two times in the last two weeks I was confronted with the PDP-11. Things which are part of my experience are nostalgic for others. They have never seen or touched them. Never experienced in real life.

What has happened? One day I saw an update in LinkedIn highlighting DEC's PDP-11 as an old system. That's nothing extraordinary. It is old. But one of my colleagues mentioned it as nostalgic. Bumm, right in the face.

Second, I got a mail by another colleague. In his signature he mentioned that this mail was written from his PDP-11. I doubted this, but he showed me a picture showing him from the backside (hopefully it is him) and a PDP-11 aside. That picture must be old. I do not consider that he really has a PDP-11 in his cellar.

But both moments let me think back into that time 30, 40 years ago. Computer Systems were different. Computer Science was slightly different. And of course the systems you own or you could directly touch were dramitically different. Compared with the systems available nowadays the are more like flintstones than real lighters.

And these thoughts created this episode. I wanted to go back with you showing some highlights in my computer-life. Not for nostalgic reasons, but to make you aware that things were really different at that time. And that it is of some benefit to know a little bit about it, to understand the situation we're currently in.