Sunday, July 12, 2015

Me and Digital PDP-11/34 and VT-100 at MIT circa 1978 or 1979 in disco shirt

Me and Digital PDP-11/34 and VT-100 at MIT circa 1978 or 1979 in disco shirt




Me in Alice in Wonderland polyester print shirt on a VT-100 terminal, so it can't be before 1978, but I think I ditched that shirt by 1980, my pants were also green polyester slacks or raspberry cords. I'm probably 20-21 junior or senior, definitely disco era. I don’t remember which computer lab this was, I was intern at HP Data Terminals (HP264X, HP2947 graphics, HP2626) 1977-1980, so this probably at MIT. Looks like PDP-11/34 Front panel with 7-segment numeric LED instead of 1 light / switch per bit. "The boot sequence had to be toggled in on the earlier models, but the /34 has an octal keypad so you can type the addresses and values rather than flipping binary switches. One of ours has a sticker with the boot sequence printed on it and we’ve singled stepped through it to verify that it works." Instead of ctrl-alt-del, you had to type in the boot sequence every time.