Conference 7.286::digital

I'd be afraid to do something like that.  Over the years it is
easy to forget how something works.  It wouldn't make a good
impression on the customer if a VP came out to fix the customer's
equipment, and made a fool of himself.
    John Sauter

You are right John, forget about VP's. But how about people who continued
to work in technical fields ? I wonder if one really forgets completely,
or if your knowledge is rather stored in some more remote places of your
memory. I suppose after having had a short look on the "RIM loader" I would
still be able to toggle it in by heart after 10 years or so without having
it used once.
  Fred

I left field service over 11 years ago.  I'll wager $5 that with a print set 
and a scope I could still fix any problem with a PDP-8.  I haven't looked
at the prints in that long but it's like an elephant, you never forget.

The problem in actually going somewhere and fixing something like an -8 is 
that I would have to find time from what I am currently doing (software 
manager) to make the trip.  Another thing is that it would be mighty hard to 
find the parts to fix an -8.  FS no longer supports this stuff and no longer 
keeps spares around.

We only have an obligation to fix systems under contract.  We don't have
an obligation to offer service contracts for everything we've ever made.

We're a business and to the extent that our best efforts can't repair a system
that parts are no longer available for, it's the customers responsibility.

It's satisfying to know that our stuff lasts so long, but that doesn't obligate
us to lose money in years to come maintaining this equipment. 

Pat Sweeney

$ SET MOOD=SOUR

Yeah...

  After all, what right did I have to expect Digital to send 
  a competent tech to fix my LQPSE, one month after I bought 
  it?  I guess I should be happy that they sent a warm body.

  And if it broke today, three years later?

  And how about that sheet feeder that DEC can't sell me, even
  though the sales person promised it would be available. Even
  a call to Ken's office just got sympathetic mumblings, but
  not a working sheet feeder. 
    
  JUST WHAT *IS* OUR LONG-TERM COMMITMENT TO CUSTOMERS?

                                   Atlant

SET MOOD=ANSWER/PLACATE

I think field service would probably be happy to maintain older
hardware if they could find a customer to make it worth their while...

I remember we wrote a justification to get rid of some RP03's and replace
them with RA81's (I know....laughter...this was a few years ago)
Anyway, the field service savings ALONE would have paid for an RA81 in
18 months!  And that's the point. Most people don't keep this stuff
around because it's too cost effective to replace it with cheaper/more
storage, power/less heat/ less floor space etc etc hardware.

Of course, there are exceptions...like the government.

I saw a 1962 Vintage Univac that was being replaced the following week
at Davis Monthan AFB. They had an MVII coming in.  I asked what it
cost to maintain...the manager was to embarrassed to tell me... he said
I was a taxpayer and would get pissed off..

re .6
Well, I don't think that only government type customers keep old stuff. 
There are probably lots of PDP xx's out there in the world that just are
to costly or even impossible to replace. I am thinking of OEM type applications
with complex interfaces that have been designed for a certain type of PDP.
These intrfaces hardware and software might have costed n-times the price
of the PDP. In some cases (personal experience) no expertise is available
to eventually adapt the interface to a more recent PDP or VAX. I don't
know for sure, but I could imagine the high maintenace cost of a vintage
PDP as compared to the cost of maintaining the overall application could
be peanuts.

Fred

    	I wouldn't mind going out to fix a PDP-8 either, and what was
    meant by saying that you couldn't get the bits??  The last time
    I fixed one I could have got all the bits I needed by stripping
    them out of an old transistor radio!
    
    	It is probably not economic for field service to maintain the
    very old equipment, but how much would it really cost? DEC has grown
    so quickly, and a lot of old equipment gets scrapped anyway, so
    probably one engineer could service every currently running PDP-8
    in the world. They were not that unreliable.  And there is a difficult
    to evaluate advantage in being able to say to a customer "we can
    and do support every CPU we ever produced". A few extra 8800 sales
    would pay the salary of the PDP-8 engineer, even if the PDP-8 customers
    did not.
    
    		Dave

    You might even get the parts locally here in Nashua :-).  Last fall
    I found two PDP-8s (the original ones, not 8-Is etc.) laying on
    their sides in a junkyard here in South Nashua.  A little judicious
    hosing off?

    It's not the CPUs that are the problem; it's the console terminals
    and paper tape readers.  They're ASR33s...

    I wouldn't mind going out on a call.  I taught the pdp-8I as late
    as a couple of years ago to a college class.  An easy where to teach
    a cpu where they can get in and examine all the points, not a whimp
    chip!
    But I wouldn't touch an ASR33!
    
    ed badger
    

    Afraid of the ASR33 ?
    Not me ! (except for the paper-tape reader!)
    Around 12 years ago, when I was a "remote" FS engineer working out
    from home, I got so disgusted from a dirty ASR33 (steel mill) that
    I took it back home, dumped it into the bathtub and washed off all
    grease and dirt with lots of soap and water, dried it with my wife's
    hairdryer and after greasing and oiling it continued to work perfectly!
    
    I know from friends (non-mechanics) that had no KSR35 "inhibition".
    For PM they just dipped the whole thing once a year into an oil-bath
    to soak the felts. worked fine !
    
    Fred

    Looks like old home week, to me.  That new fandled 8 is a great
    machine.  And so easy to fix, too.
    
    re: .8  I sincerely doubt if you could have only 1 F/E to maintain
    all the 8's that still remain under contract.  It was only a couple
    years ago that the local (Northeast) region was pleading for someone
    with 8 experience to join the region to support the techs in the
    field with some of the "tougher" problems.  Pay was no object (or
    so my source said as he pleaded with me.)
    
    I gave it some serious thought, I'll admit that much.
    
    There are still large numbers of 8's and 12's and 15's (well mabye
    not so many 15's) around.  They're all working, too.  In a lot of
    cases it would cost much too much to try to upgrade to a newer machine.
    Especially in special OEM applications.  <Why I remember this old
    12 with an NN01 on it in a 3rd sub basement ...yes it's local and
    still running... interfaced to a fancy nuclear mass spectograph
    or some such similar (rest of that floor) mass of hardware...>
    
    It would be real interesting if someone could actually tap the F/S
    database (Psst... it's in STOW.) and find out how many of these
    "foundations of the company" are still under contract.
    
    Personally, I'd love to see an interface for an RA81 to the 8!
    I'd even settle for an RA60,... how about an RD52 - PLEASE!
    
    I just checked, and I can still do RIM with out looking.  The fingers
    don't forget.  (OK, I looked the first time - but only once.)
    
    				I/O Preset
    						DO!
    
    							-bp-

-bp-:

  Sorry but 8's only have (choose one) 4K, 32K, or 128K of 
  memory available.  I doubt that you could do much useful 
  work with the '8, once you'd filled up the memory with all 
  that MSCP stuff.  Only the 128K PDP-8As have a prayer.

  Gee -- Remember how easy it was to program the old 
  controllers?  Bootstrap the old controllers?

       PDP-8 + RK8E           PDP11* + RK11C/D
    =================       ===================
       0030 / 6743            Init
       0031 / 5031            17777404 <-- 5
       Load Addr 30           Load Addr 0
       Clear                  Start
       Cont

                                   Atlant


* Please don't flame at me about the /15/20, /35/40, and /60 
  not doing DMA while halted.  I'm not responsible for machines 
  that are multiples of 20.  But I know who is!

                                   Atlant

    PDP-8s may have only 4K, 32K or 128K of memory (the one I worked
    on actually had 20k!), but at least it was 12 bit words, so that
    you could do so much more with that memory than you can these days
    with only 8 bits!
    
    T

    
    Gee, I wouldn't mind going out on another call.  Used to travel
    the world fixing KA10's and RP02's.  Seems a lot of us are familar
    with 'the old DEC' frequently mentioned in these notes.
    
    Anyone care to reflect-I could tell a few stories such as branch
    FE's could fix ANYTHING and always had at least one 'junk box.'
    
    Usually they were DECtape canisters....
    
    Some guys even built their own 8's or 11's from scrap parts.
    
    <flame NOT on>
    Try to find a junk drawer today - someone asks what's the part number.
    
    Ray.  started in 1970
    

    re: .16
    
    Hello Ray.  If my memory serves me (????? :-) ), you are the Ray
    that wrote SYSERR.
    
    Everything you say is TRUE.  THE GOOD OL' DAYS -- did a lot of
    traveling myself on the same gear.  LOTS & LOTS  of war stories.
    
    IRISH   ( still crazy after all these years )
        

    re: .-1
    
    OK, you found me.  But now I'm working on SPEAR - SYSERR's successor.
    
    Talk about war stories.....
    
    ps. Could someone exlain what this ':-)' etc is?  I know it's a
    shorthand for emotions but haven't seen it fully spec'd.
    

    re .18   I don't have to do this, Ray is just around the corner.
     See the etiquette conference, it suggests ways of using various
    punctuation marks to indicate sarcasm, I'm smiling, I'm smiling
    AT you (vs WITH you), etc.
    
    	Reg
    

    
    	I'll take a call on ANY 18 bit product that dec ever made. 
    Whether or not I fix it will be a function of availability of prints
    and parts (though a lot of the design was slack enough that modern
    discretes would probably work with a minor RCO).
    
    The above attitude *almost* got me sucked into helping recommission
    the PDP 1's predecessor a few years ago in the dec museum.

    8s and 12s ?,  Well OK if I HAD TO.   Seems the last 12 biter I
    worked on was a 5.

    10s and 20s,  I fixed a couple of KAs in England (Oxford and Imperial
    College, I think ?)  Hmmmm....  its been a while.
    
    	Reg
    
    		(Oh yeah, finish the design for 'em - they left a lot
    of stuff unterminated in those days, unused inputs not tied off,
    stuff like that)
    
    

    re: .20--The original memory for the PDP-6, the 161, was 18 bits
    wide.  Does that qualify early PDP-6s as 18-bit machines?  The
    instructions were all 2*18 bits long, but lots of them dealt with
    18-bit (half)words.
    
    DEC didn't make the predecessor to the PDP-1.  I'm not exactly
    sure which machine you mean, since the PDP-1 borrowed from a lot
    of sources, but I will guess Whirlwind, TX-2 or AN/FSQ-7.  Maybe
    TX-0, but that was a vacuum tube machine, and I don't think anybody
    wants to spend his life keeping one of those working.
        John Sauter

    Re (.21 re .20)	TX-0 it was/is.   I guess Gordon B was involved
    in getting a hold of it and its original technician was "retiring".
    Anyway, I would have loved to have done it, but couldn't have justified
    the time/effort.
    
    	Reg
    
    

    RE: .10 & .11
    
    	You bet!  ASR33's are really fun.  I really liked KSR35's, too,
    but not the 37's so much.  Wouldnt it be great to have 33'/35's
    back???
    
    Keith
    
    

    
        I am not sure if I am thinking of what your talking about.
    Here in the U.K. we *had* a Teletype machine called the LT33 and
    LT35 also a DataDynamics 390. 
        Even though these printers / papertape reader, punces were
    difficult to maintain they had a lot of character and very often
    a mind of their own.
      Also what has happened to the PC05's and CR11's these days.
    Can anyone fill me in as to the original sales / release strategies
    for the affore mentioned options. As I repair them but alas Iam
    too young to remember their beginnings.
    
    Alan  Who's only 21but loves archieves.

  LT33 was the DEC option name for a slightly-modified Teletype 
  Corporation ASR33.  Same for LT35.  I don't know if DEC ever 
  OEM'd the ASR/KSR37 -- I've never actually seen one in the
  flesh but heard they were at least 15/11 or maybe even 
  (15/11)^2 or (15/11)^3 as hard to keep tuned up!

  Ahh -- PC04/5s and CR11s.  Now those were the bad old days.
  We actually had more of the CM11 (Mark-Sense) card readers
  as compared to the CR11 (punched-card) readers.  Something on 
  the cards caused the picker rubber to glaze over and mis-pick 
  cards -- I was forever "slightly abrading" the surface.  The 
  '10 guys got to work on the really big stuff (whatever the '10 
  guys called the 1200 card/minute reader that was sold as the 
  CD11).  Glad I didn't!

  Two more for your nostalgia list: LP01/LP02 Dataproducts printers.

  And what was the name of the Analogics printer before that?

                                   Atlant

       Didn't you just LOVE those paper tape readers in the TTY? They
    were sooooo slow. And when you had a tape about 8" high they would
    always STOP 3/4 of the way through.
                                                    Denny

Here's on for you... How many of you have ever logged on to an 8800 with
a VT-05?

Talk about the ultimate irony...