Make sure you read the whole thread.

No need for espresso, this is a genuine wtf, MBH. I couldn't resist - on Saturday, I'll turn 69.:eek:

I believe the first PDP that I got to touch was an 11, but I can't be sure. It was at a printing company, and I didn't work on it professionally, just got to tinker one evening.

I thought it was bad when I had to work on a Tandem Non-Stop which required setting the registers on dip switches, turning the key each time you set a byte, to get it to boot. Or the Heathkit H9 which required entering the boot code in hex every power-up.

But think about it, CA - it was tedious sometimes, but it was a ton of fun. We got a D/A convertor for the PDP8, and a rack-mounted Tektronix oscilloscope that fit into the standard 19" PDP8 rack. I spent a whole Saturday one time writing code to output X, Y, Z coordinates to the scope (Z was brightness) so I could write "Hello World" on the oscilloscope screen, using "Z" to turn off the dot between letters. Thought I was a genius. :cool:

NovaScotian, you win...

I got to do sysadmin work on a typesetting system running on J11, that's a souped-up PDP 11. Four of them, actually, with two systems being up at the end of the night being enough to get the newspaper out on time.
Amazing machinery with fascinating fail-safe features, considering the age of the hardware.

Building a system with that level of reliability is still a challenge even today.