And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
The good news is that there are SW emulators for just about any OS. The not-so-good news is that floppy drives, support hardware, and other interfaces are sometimes more difficult to come by. There used to be a place in Sunnyvale called Weird Stuff Warehouse that bought and sold all kinds of used and out of date hardware that was the go-to place for sustaining and/or resurrecting old systems. At one time, you could find just about anything there. I haven’t tried going there for over 20 years, so I don’t know if they are still operating.
A lot of the early computer and telephone components got snarfed up for gold recycling. Sent Canada for smelting and gold recovery. The board connectors had a high content of gold. Some batches of connectors had as much as 10 ounces of gold per ton. Way better than gold mines.
Where do you put the bobbin?
ReplyDeleteThat made me chuckle.
DeleteMight be usable to play pacman or store photos but there isn't a website that will recognize its ancient operating system.
ReplyDeleteYes, in a private enterprise.
ReplyDeleteI could see a few DMVs out there still using them...
ReplyDeleteYa beat me to it. I was gonna say there's got to be some government office, somewhere that still has one, or more, of those around.
DeleteUp until a few years ago PDP 11 were used as fuel rod controllers in CANDU reactors. One guy’s job was to search the internet and salvagers for parts
ReplyDeleteWith DEC gone, I would imagine parts are rather rare. I used a PDP 11-70 back in the 70s. IIRC DEC had discontinued the PDP 11 series by the mid 80s.
ReplyDeleteI have visited a government contractor which still uses a commodore 64 to control one of its production machines.
ReplyDeleteThe good news is that there are SW emulators for just about any OS. The not-so-good news is that floppy drives, support hardware, and other interfaces are sometimes more difficult to come by. There used to be a place in Sunnyvale called Weird Stuff Warehouse that bought and sold all kinds of used and out of date hardware that was the go-to place for sustaining and/or resurrecting old systems. At one time, you could find just about anything there. I haven’t tried going there for over 20 years, so I don’t know if they are still operating.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the early computer and telephone components got snarfed up for gold recycling. Sent Canada for smelting and gold recovery. The board connectors had a high content of gold. Some batches of connectors had as much as 10 ounces of gold per ton. Way better than gold mines.
DeleteAdd a few more parts and it's a sewing machine.
ReplyDeleteI bet the FAA or IRS or VA or USPS uses them somewhere
ReplyDeleteOne of Musk's goals for DOGE is rid the US gov of old computers
ReplyDeleteNemo
If he can do it without Bill Gates replacing them, I'm all for it.
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