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Article #932

Re: PDP-11 chronology (was: Re: notable computer stories...)

#932
From: m... Mark Brader
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 1990 13:01
29 lines
2082 bytes
> > 1) Way back when, when Doonesbury was just getting started, Trudeau
> >    had a little series with Mark learning how to program a PDP 11/70
> >    (at least I think it was the 11/70) for a summer job.  He didn't
> >    have such a good time with it.  If anyone has the book "Still a Few 
> >    Bugs in the System" they can confirm this for us all...

> The PDP 11/70 didn't hit the streets until 1975.

The >> article is quite right, except that it wasn't (called) programming,
it wasn't an 11/70, and it wasn't "Still a Few Bugs in the System".

The series (one week's worth of Doonesbury, I think) actually appears at
the start of the book "Call Me When You Find America".  My copy is part
of a boxed set which also includes "Still a Few...", which may account
for the error.  The copyright dates shown are 1971-73, by the way.

The computer is actually a "PDP-112".  Little did Trudeau know that DEC
would give up on the PDP name scheme before the numbers got that high!

Finally, Mark's job title is actually "computer operator"... though he
does produce a program (only to press the wrong button and delete it),
so this presumably only shows that Trudeau didn't know the difference.

-- 
Mark Brader			"So the American government went to IBM
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto		 to come up with a data encryption standard
utzoo!sq!msb, m...@sq.com	 and they came up with...?"  "EBCDIC!"

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Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!sunic!uupsi!rpi!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo!sq!msb
References: <1361@scorn.sco.COM> <1523@redsox.bsw.com>

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From: m...@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: PDP-11 chronology (was: Re: notable computer stories...)
Summary: correct Doonesbury reference
Message-ID: <1990Jan20.130157.10391@sq.sq.com>
Date: 20 Jan 90 13:01:57 GMT
References: <1361@scorn.sco.COM> <1523@redsox.bsw.com>
Reply-To: m...@sq.com (Mark Brader)
Organization: SoftQuad Inc.
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Posted: Sat Jan 20 14:01:57 1990
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