In <m0sRN2W-0007FLC@argus.lowell.edu>, James D. Howard II wrote:
>
>What is a PDP-8?
>
Way back in the mists of time, DEC made a machine called a PDP-8. It (or
ours, anyway) had 4K of magnetic core memory, a wire-wrapped "backplane",
several teletypes, and a paper tape reader as its permanent storage system
(rumor had it there was something called DECtape, which was *magnetic*, but I
never saw one). It had lots of toggle switches on the front which you could
use to boot load your paper tape loader (anyone remember "0200 load address
start"?). Its 12 bit address space broke down rather nicely into 4 octal
digits. I learned to program in FOCAL 69 and PAL-III assembler on this
machine when I was in high school. To this day I think much better in octal
than hex. Maybe that's why I have an MG...
markl
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Mark L. Lambert
Mobile Systems Group
Oracle Corporation
"I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm
alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if
I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it...unless
I'm thirsty"
-- Mme. Lily Bollinger, on Champagne
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