old DEC gear wanted

[Jerome H. Fine]

 >Zane H. Healy wrote:

> >At 1:27 AM -0500 11/10/06, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
>
>> but I wouldn't be surprised if a few PDP11s are
>> still doing some oddball stuff out there).
>
> They're still around in various settings, industrial, scientific, 
> business, etc.   They're used for such things as electron microscopes, 
> spectrum analyzers, controlling parts of nuclear plants, etc., 
> PDP-11's are still big business.  In some cases it's because they're 
> still working, why spend the money to replace, in others it would 
> simply cost more to replace than it does to keep them running 
> (typically places where qualifying new HW/SW can cost insane amounts 
> of money).

Jerome Fine replies:

I don't have any estimates as to how much "insane" might be,
but as a wild guess, from 10 to 1000 times the actual
cost of the associated software and hardware for the
actual system.  So if a typical PDP-11/73 system might have
cost $ 20,000.00 new (back in 1985), then the complete
application, including associated software and hardware
interfaces might be from $ 200,000.00 to $ 20,000,000.00
for just one subsystem.  At Ontario Hydro, a typical
3,000 Megawatt station might have cost $ 10,000,000,000.00
to build, so the PDP-11/73 system would be only a small,
but critical sub-system.

Jay - did you get my reply.  Why did you want to contact me?

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
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