Subject: Re: [OT] early machine size (was Re: The horror that is XML) From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 20:17:03 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3224434632447975@naggum.net> * Kent M Pitman <pitman@world.std.com> | Ha. Sometimes as SMALL as that. Mostly that's the size (and even look) | of a disk drive of the era. Except for the KS-10, which is a latter day | model that was very small, I think PDP10's, fully configured with memory, | etc. took up a LOT more space than that. Certainly the ones we had at | MIT did. I've seen some small laundramats that weren't as big as the | PDP10's we had... The room at the University of Oslo that once housed their DECSYTEM 1099 SMP (I believe that was the designation) with almost a gigabyte of disk space (I think it actually had 800M at its peak) and 2 meagwords of memory (one moby = 128KW per cabinet, as I recall), now serves as the computer terminal room for more than 100 students. I think they and their workstations produce about 1/10th the heat the PDP-10 did. That PDP-10 with its dual KL-10 SMP was the first real computer I used. It might well be the last -- I still wait for something that would give me the same satisfaction as a user and programmer. Buying the biggest goddamn cabinet I could find for my now old dual 600MHz Pentium III with its 512M RAM, 128G of disk space and dual power supplies did not quite cut it, but at least people who visit me refuse to believe it is a "PC". It even has a lot of front-panel blinkenlights, and if I listen in on the 100MHz band with my portable radio, I can hear the bus, Almost there... /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.