🚀 go-pugleaf

People who just tell stories about core memory are all wimps. :-)  Real
programmers still have a machine running with it.  We do.  Actually, it's
sort of a museum case in several ways:  it runs the last functioning card
reader on campus!  The reader is used a few times a year for converting
"dusty decks" to more modern formats.  The interface is a real cheapie
job with no buffering, and it's very difficult for an operating system
that ever locks out interrupts to keep up with it.  So one of our old
pdp11/05s, core memory and all, is now a dedicated card-reader controller,
hooked into our production systems by serial line.  Naturally, I couldn't
resist the temptation to make the program power-fail proof, so we never
have to reload the thing.  (We *can* still do it if needed, however!)
-- 
1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1990: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry he...@zoo.toronto.edu