Work at the Mill
Or, the Story of Digital Equipment Corporation

While MIT approved the project, they didn’t make it easy for him. The school set the terms that he could hire approximately zero people and that he could have approximately zero space. Olsen considered these constraints seriously, but he then realized that these terms weren’t as rigid as one might assume. While he could hire no one, he could have people volunteer to help him, and while he couldn’t have space, he realized that hallways weren’t exactly counted as “space.” He and three others setup in the hall outside of his office and put a few walls around it. After a short time, they traded their makeshift area for a spot in the basement, and they then discovered that part of the Lincoln Laboratory’s basement was unfinished, just a bare dirt floor. Well, Olsen managed to convince someone to pour concrete, another someone to put in a light colored floor, and they painted the concrete masonry walls. They put in enough lighting to make their new location the brightest of any in the lab building.
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The computer that Olsen and his team built in that basement was the TX-0. It was far smaller than Whirlwind, and it was slightly faster. This machine used a vector display like its larger sibling, but it was a fully transistorized 18bit computer, had a 16bit address range for its core memory, and it could use a light pen. The TX-0 was finished in 1956. Almost immediately, work began on a much larger and more ambitious machine, the TX-2. Olsen was working on the hardware for that, but he became impatient with the team designing the logic. It was in 1957 that he chose to leave. He had some well reasoned confidence in his choice.
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https://www.abortretry.fail/p/work-at-the-mill

#retrocomputing #unix #DEC

💻 Weekend w wiejskiej naprawialni / hakerspejsie i makerspejsie w jednym 😉

Wspaniały malutki retro #ThinkPad #x201 wymagał udrożnienia i poprawienia chłodzenia.
Ależ to była kultura techniczna tych starszych konstrukcji. A klawiatura? Niedościgniony wzór wygody, dzisiaj już takich nie robią ⌨️

Przy okazji ważna uwaga, jeśli chcecie korzystać z Ubuntu i pochodnych na tym modelu: w grubie koniecznie nomodeset do parametrów kernela, bo będzie się wieszał w trybie graficznym. Eksperymentuję również z i915.modeset=0

Z tymi ustawieniami śmiga jak złoto 😀

P.S. Jeśli macie takie starsze laptopy które Wam zalegają, chcielibyście je ożywić lub przekazać w dobre ręce, by były nadal wykorzystywane, to polecam się Waszej uwadze. Jest tutaj na Polesiu sporo młodzieży tzw. wiejskiej, częściowo wykluczonej cyfrowo, której w różnych programach i współpracach przekazujemy sprzęt.
Chętnie również naprawię Wam takie starsze retro-cacko, paczkomat we wsi obok więc transport to nie problem 😀

#Repair #Reinstall #Reuse #retrocomputing #countryHackerSpace

Thanks to @joel@fosstodon.org for reminding me of #FollowFriday!

Alright, let's do this...

Follow @davidrevoy@framapiaf.org for a peak into the creative process of creating the wonderful #PepperCarrot webcomic 🖌️
Follow @amapanda@en.osm.town for #OpenStreetMap news, or if you're a map nerd like me or her 🗺️
Follow @dansup@mastodon.social for keeping track of #Pixelfed development and understanding why #ActivityPub is great 📷
Follow @kidsan@hachyderm.io, because he's an all-around good dude I met last week in #Darmstadt at #NixCon2023. He recently moved instances and lost a bunch of followers, so follow him if you're interested in the tech stuff he boosts ❄️
Follow @emily@hackaday.social for awesome #RetroComputing stuff and if you're into #Electronics. She's a self-described geek and her interesting posts reflects that 💡
Follow @leighelse@mastodon.nz, because she seems to be a very kind person who lives an interesting life. Also, she boosts various interesting stuff ☺️
Follow @bees@botsin.space for...well...endless bees 😄​​
And of course follow @joel@fosstodon.org!!