Serial interfaces (was Re: Any former Psion 5 owners out there?)

[Tony Duell]

> You guys are going to force me to learn something about DEC gear yet. 

Well, maybe :-). Old DEC machines are fun...

> :-)  Not that I'd mind at all, aside from the fact that I  already have 
> way too many interests.  After considerable Googling I think I did learn 
> that SPC is the acronym for Small Peripheral Controller.  Everyone has 
> to start somewhere, right?  Then I re-read the email above and

I was thrown in at the deep end. I was given a PDP11/45, an MUD memory 
board (but no suitable backplane) and the printsets (no user manual, no 
instruciton set listing, etc -- and this was before the days of public 
access to the Internet). And I managed to sort it all out in the end. It 
took me about 6 weeks to get it running a simple program. It's a lot 
easier when you can ask on this list :-)
 
> discovered that you said that in the first paragraph!  Arrrgggh.  Well, 
> at least now I might remember that bit of information for a while.
> 
> This reminds me of a little saying I saw about a year ago and found 
> rather humorous.  "If you want to be a guru in some area, the first 
> thing to do is memorize all the holy acronyms."  I think there's a fair 
> amount of truth in that...

There is, indeed. But in gnneral the acronyms are used to speed up 
communication (it's a lot easier to type 'PDP11' than 'Programmed Data 
Processor Model 11' rather than to conceal information and we'll be happy 
to expalin any of them.

-tony