Pointers to Computer Info

Hardware interests

I'm a great fan of many classic computers, and there is a web site for that, called (amazingly enough) Classic Computing (or ClassicCmp for brevity). They have a couple of mailing lists, which are effectively the same. But, while the mailing lists are reasonably active, apparently the web site has less attention (I looked at their "FAQ" page and it contains a note from over a decade ago saying the FAQ had many errors and there's a V2.0 which "is still being written".

DEC Hardware

I'm into certain historical computers from DEC, I have several PDP-8 machines, quite a few PDP-11 machines and a number of MicroVAX machines and I'm also interested in the PDP-6 & -10 (but have yet to find one of either kind that will run in my basement :-).

These are three (that I know of) general repositories for info (including related software) on these systems:

The Update Computer Club at Uppsala in Sweden has a large FTP repository which has lots of useful resources.
John Wilson also has an FTP repository of generally useful stuff along with his Ersatz-11 (a PDP-11 emulator that runs on many machines).
UNC Chapel Hill has a large FTP repository of stuff as a part of their ibiblio.org system.

At some point DEC sold the entire (hardware and software) PDP-11 product line to Mentec, but that site redirects to another and I couldn't find any reference to the old DEC products on that site. If anyone has newer info, I'd like to hear it.

A short text and several pictures of the machines I used at MIT in the mid 70's are available.

PDP-11

There has been lots of flux in this area, it will take a bit of work to reconstruct this section. If you are really interested in seeing it, you could let me know of your interest and that might inspire me to do the needed research.

PDP-8

PDP-10

Other Computers

Software interests

This was a complex mess in the old version. It's going to take a lot to bring it up to snuff...

Computer communications

A lot of work is needed here, too.

Home Setup

I have quite an extensive network at home, and used to have info on it here. But, I've now moved twice since I wrote that so none of it applies. Maybe I'll get to diagramming and documenting the new setup.

Home Automation

A related area is Home Automation setups. I still haven't done anything with this and the old references are most O.B.E., but maybe someday I'll rewrite this...

Automated Entertainment Systems

A specialized area of Home Automation is application to Entertainment Systems. But, this is another area that changed too much since I was maintaining the pointers.

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And finally, a random note:
When I die I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather and not kicking and screaming like the passengers in his car.