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From: pcl%robots.oxford.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK (Paul Leyland)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: pdp-11/55
Message-ID: <9869@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 20-Oct-87 09:23:22 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-adm.9869
Posted: Tue Oct 20 09:23:22 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Oct-87 01:47:41 EST
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Dave Mason (mason@tmsoft.uucp) says:
> The only interesting thing about the 11/60 is that it had (because of
> the (writable) microcode) many interesting (to some) instructions.


Too right.  When I worked at the Nuclear Physics Lab here at Oxford, we
had a couple of 11/60's.  'Orrible little machines, but that home-brewed
microcode made them into damn good CAMAC data collection boxes.  Certainly
a lot better than a 11/780 could ever manage.  (Yes, we did use the VAX
on occasion - some experimenters only had VAX software and couldn't / wouldn't
use the standard code.)

They were fairly elderly when I started there in 1984 but they did the job
and were paid for, whereas a replacement would have cost real money.
Keeping them working, however, was another thing entirely.  In the end,
just before I left ten months ago, we took them off the maintenance
contract as they were just *too* expensive.  Strangely enough, we rarely
had many hardware problems, despite them living in a dirty basement control
room.  The dust would clog the filters within a couple of months.  The DEC
engineer hated the PMs ...

Paul Leyland		JANET:	pcl@uk.ac.oxford.robots