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Comment Re:VMS is dead; long live WNT (Score 2) 136

You are only middlin' right. WNT is like VMS as far as the general design of the kernel goes - but most of what makes VMS the wonder that it is is missing. No versioning file system, no DCL (DEC Command Language), no Distributed Lock Manager, no clustering (WNT clustering isn't even in the same league as VMS clustering), no logical name support, no RMS (Record Management System), no sophisticated Batch and Print environment, the list goes on and on. Without these things, WNT may schedule tasks and manage memory more or less like VMS does, but does not deliver the utility and user experience that make VMS legendary.

Comment Banjos...not a fan... (Score 5, Funny) 101

One day my old pal David has played a gig with some local musicians, including his roommate, Bob, who was a banjo player. After the set, Bob was going somewhere else with some other people, so he asked Dave to take his banjo home for him. On the way home, David stopped at the convenience store to get a six pack. As he was standing in line, he suddenly realized that he had left the car windows down, and that he was in a bad neighborhood. He rushed out, but, sure as hell, the worst possible thing had happened - exactly what he was afraid of - someone had spotted the open car windows, and thrown two more banjoes in the car.

Comment Earliest I know of... (Score 1) 178

Inthe 70s, Zork on PDP11s had GDT (game debugging tool). It allowed you to manipulate the arrays of objects, locations, etc. It had a password prompt, that demanded your name, cat and zip code. I recall that the name was supnik, the cat was barney, and I've forgotten the zip code. Bob Supnik was the DEC engineer that translated ZORK frm MDL to Fortran.

Comment Re:Are there any old drives around that read these (Score 1) 481

DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) sold lots of systems that used these 8" disks. Lots of PDP-8 systems and PDP-11 systems used them for system devices. DEC's first VAX computers, the 11/780, used them as load devices for loading the microcode before the system would boot from a real hard disk. I have a bunch of them in my collection, attached to PDP-11s, still working fine.

Comment Re:Airchat, or as I like to call it, CB Radio (Score 1) 180

It's a good point, that VHF allocation for CB would prevent some of the abuses it is prone too. But when it was allocated, radios that operated at 50 Mc and above . were exotic and expensive. Gear that would operate at 27 Mc was a lot cheaper and ruggeder than VHF gear would have been.

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