9 Jun
2025
9 Jun
'25
8:39 p.m.
From: Vicente Collares
I'm more interested in its historical
signaficance.
If that's your interest, PDP-11's are absolutely _the_ way to go. The PDP-11
is _the_ machine that made UNIX. That choice has good points, and a very bad
point, though.
Good points are that QBUS PDP-11's are pretty easy to find, pretty small
(desktop PC-sized), and not very expensive. They're pretty robust, too - I
have a large stack of PDP-11 QBUS CPUs, and none of them had failed, as of the
last time that I powered them on.
The very bad point is that working mass storage for them is very hard to
find. The controllers are around, but not the drives.
Does anyone know if anyone is making a QBUS mass storage clone? Bridgham and
I were going to produce QBUS RK11/RP11 clone that used SD cards to hold the
bits. We got the prototype working, and it booted UNIX, but then I came down
with COVID and post-COVID myalgic encephalomyelitis, and that was the end of
that.
Noel