PDP-6s at MIT

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Sat Dec 24 09:49:30 CST 2016


    > From: Lars Brinkhoff

    > I have this on AI:

    >> the semi-original AI (that is, the KA-10 rather than the PDP-6) was
    >> .. was given to a bunch of hackers from Concourse

Oh, right, now that you mention it, I very vaguely recall this.

I'm not sure why I thought they had taken a KA too - I think I may have been
confused by this email:

  Date: Fri, 16 Sep 88 00:16:04 EDT
  From: Peter Lothberg <ROLL at AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
  Subject: The "crack team", is dissasembling MX, for it's trip to Sweden
  To: INFO-ITS at AI.AI.MIT.EDU

  The crack team has begun to work;
  ...
  (As the system will not fill the container more than 40% or so, we vold like
  donations of other stuff, like Lisp-machines, AAA terminals, a IMP,
  Conection machines, retired 2060's etc, (I'm not joking...))

which does talk about taking other stuff. But I have this persistent memory
that they took a KA - maybe I should try and get ahold of Peter and see? There
is a later email:

  Date: 11-Nov-88  0:39:51 +0100
  From: Peter_Lothberg <ROLL%SESTAK.BITNET at MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
  To: bug-its at ai.ai.mit.edu
  Subject: The container and MX

  Arrived to Stockholm and we unpacked the container on wendsday.

  The container has, sure shaked, the cardboard paper that we put between
  the cabinets, has bloue spots.....

  But, everything was in the same position that we left it, so, hopfully it is
  not hurt by the transport, or the cold here.

  We have put the machine on several places, while we are waiting for our new
  machine room to be completed.

which makes it sound like they only got the KL? It's also possibly I am mixing
two memories, and remembering this:

  Date: Sat, 3 Oct 87 23:02:14 EDT
  From: Alan Bawden <ALAN at AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
  Subject: The operating system that wouldn't die! AAAAIIIIEEEEEE!!!!!
  To: INFO-ITS at AI.AI.MIT.EDU

  I thought I would take this opportunity to spread the word about something
  that I don't think has been very widely publicized. Some of you may recall
  that a while ago some fellows in Sweden contacted us about running ITS on
  various PDP-10's that they owned? Well, we mailed them a set of tapes for
  bringing up ITS on their 2020, which they were able to do without too much
  trouble .. That all happened over a year ago. Recently we learned that these
  guys have successfully -built- ITS paging hardware for their KA-10, and have
  ITS up and running there as well! Totally Amazing.

Pretty astonishing accomplishment, that.

       Noel


More information about the cctech mailing list