Nope. But I learned programming back when machine memories were measured in k
words -- like the college timesharing 11/20 with 28kW, or the physics
department lab 11/20 with 8 kW (and an RC11 hard drive, 64 kW if I remember
right). For that matter, I remember squeezing CDC 6400 boot code into a 12
word "deadstart panel" and the secondary boot into a 320 word disk sector.
Nowadays some of the machines I work with have a terabyte of RAM. Mindboggling.
paul
> On Sep 10, 2025, at 4:18 PM, Wayne S <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> You’re a hardware guy, huh?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Sep 10, 2025, at 12:31, Paul Koning via cctalk <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Sep 10, 2025, at 3:10 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 9/10/25 11:02, ben via cctalk wrote:
>>>> On 2025-09-10 8:46 a.m., Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
>>>>> On 9/10/25 08:32, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>>>>>>> On Sep 9, 2025, at 8:52 PM, Martin Eberhard via cctalk
>>>>>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I just love the PDP11's assembly language.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, the PDP-11 machine language was INCREDIBLY brilliant, and did the
>>>>> very best with what you could do in 16 bits!
>>>>
>>>> But even then you could see the hand writing on the wall for 16 bits.
>>>
>>> Oh, absolutely, the PDP-11 was the best 16-bit instruction set I've ever
>>> seen, and I've seen quite a few. But, there were substantial limitations.
>>> Then, I moved up to the VAX, which was a real experience! Over the top
>>> instruction set, but it kept all the greatness of the PDP-11, and solved
>>> the address space issue.
>>
>> For a while, until programmers used it all up. This is the Microsoft
>> effect: programs will expand to consume all available CPU, memory, and
>> storage.
>>
>> paul
>>
