ColinRE: https://labyrinth.social/@nash/116178591588359360
you ever write code so inefficient you have to secure 80% of the world’s DRAM production
cliffordheath@colinstu Running Unix on a PDP/11 in 1981, we had to upgrade the memory from 96kB to 256kB to support three users. That's kilobytes, not gigabytes. Queensland University had a 16 port terminal device with students on the same hardware
@colinstu I was able to compile C code, play Pacman (fullscreen TUI), or run database code while other users used a sonic digitiser to trace radiographs on an interactive vector graphics screen (Tektronix storage tube), and a plotter made colour drawings or uploaded data files to the supercomputer. Real-time applications...
DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄)@cliffordheath @colinstu
I don't understand; in 1976..1979 at UC Berkeley we had a PDP-11/70 with 1 megabyte running initially Unix V6 and later Unix V7 that supported 50 users.
It allowed 60 users but was very unresponsive with that many.
Perhaps your users were always running resource-intensive apps.
adaddinsane (Steve Turnbull)@dougmerritt @cliffordheath @colinstu
I hand-coded the driver for a PDP11 tape reader and keyed it in using the switches. Which then loaded the OS.
It did work.
@adaddinsane
Kudos! Definitely a war story.
@dougmerritt @adaddinsane @colinstu the DEC peripherals were very simple to program. Our PDP11/34 loaded from RK05 drive which required entering over a dozen opcodes. I decompiled it once. It was basically "read block 0 into address 0, wait for completion, then jump there". At least it had a hex keypad, not just the row of switches of some others. Operators did learn to set those switches incredibly fast however