The Ancient Computer Time Machine

This month's Linux journal has a great article on SIMH and running an emulation of Unix R5. I took a look at the simh.trailing-edge.com site and found that they also had an emulation of the old IBM accounting machines and a software kit for the SPS (Symbolic Programming System) assembler. SPS was the first language I ever learned (the second was Cobol), so this brought back memories.

For you other old timers, maybe you flipped switches on a MITS Altair 8800 - they have that, too. Lots of PDP stuff; this is an incredibly fascinating resource.


Hate these ads?

The young folk might want to pull down a little of this stuff just to see why we old timers are as grumpy as we are: this is the software that molded us. It could also be amusing to look at sources and see the beginning of security problems that are still with us today.



Comments /Unixart/simh.html


Thu Nov 10 17:20:11 2005: Subject:   rbailin
Thank you Tony for point this site out. I cut my teeth on PDP-8/S and 8/E systems, and truly miss the hands-on approach that these systems afforded. Not to mention the coding skills required when you only have 4K of memory to work with. Bad or poor coding practices were not simply frowned upon, they were pretty much unworkable due to these hardware constraints.



Front-panel lights, toggle switches, paper tape and ASR-33's. The good old days when every opcode mattered. The $30K price points...

--Bob

Add your comments

ad

Enter your email address for automatic notification of new posts here
(be sure to whitelist 'feedburner.com' if you use spam filtering)

Or use any RSS reader

Delivered by FeedBurner


LOD Communications, Inc.

Views for this page
Today This Week This Month This Year  Overall
31012409 2,137

Have you tried Searching this site?

Unix/Linux/Mac OS X support by phone, email or on-site: Support Rates

This is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more. We appreciate comments and article submissions.

Publishing your articles here

pavatar.jpg
More:
       - Kernel/Internals




Unix/Linux Consultants

Your ad here - $24.00 yearly!

http://www.m3ipinc.com Security, firewalls, ids, audits, vulnerability assesments, BS7799, HIPAA, GLB, incident handling


UBB Computer Services Support for Openserver, Unixware and Linux. Windows integration with Unix/Linux servers. Hardware, Backup and Networking issues. Located near Sacramento CA, we provide onsite support throughout Northern CA and Nationwide via remote access. We are a SCO Authorized Partner and a Microlite BackupEdge Certified Reseller.


http://www.vss3.com SCO/Caldera OpenServer, Unixware & Linux. Tarantella & Non-stop Clustering









Change Congress


Related Posts