[math-fun] Ancient computers still live in cloud heaven
FYI -- No mention of 7094, PDP-10, Lisp Machines, etc. Wouldn't it be fun to boot up your favorite old computer on Amazon Web Services? Perhaps MIT can resurrect ITS & allow us old farts to log back in to check our old email. Stromasys loves "pennies from heaven": Oh every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven Don't you know each cloud contains pennies from heaven You'll find your fortune fallin' all over town Be sure that your umbrella is upside down Trade them for a package of sunshine and flowers If you want the things you love, you must have showers So when you hear it thunder, don't run under a tree There'll be pennies from heaven for you and me http://www.metrolyrics.com/pennies-from-heaven-lyrics-billie-holiday.html http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2014/10/stromasys-emulates-l... Stromasys emulates legacy hardware in the cloud At last! Recycle your VAX, Alpha, PDP-11, HP 3000 and Sparc boxes 7 October 2014 by Max Smolaks Swiss software emulation expert Stromasys has launched a virtualization product that can take vintage VAX, Alpha, HP 3000, PDP-11, and Sparc applications to the cloud. Surprising numbers of critical services are running on platforms originally created for hardware which is no longer produced. Stromasys' service run them from a third-party data center, giving all the features and benefits of a cloud infrastructure, without having to recompile decades-old code. Out with the old PDP-11 and Vax by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), as well as HP 3000 by Hewlett-Packard were minicomputer systems created in the 1970s. The Sparc RISC chip (now owned by Oracle) was introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1987, while the 64-bit Alpha architecture from DEC appeared in 1992. Despite their venerable age, such systems are still used for many mission critical applications in fields such as banking, manufacturing and air traffic control. The OpenVMS operating system from the Vax, along with other venerable platforms, is still supported by HP. However, the aging components and disappearance of some suppliers (DEC was acquired by Compaq and then merged with HP) have made the operation of these systems on the original hardware increasingly difficult. Porting complete solutions to new hardware and a new OS is often expensive and associated with high risk. In response to this, Stromasys has launched a virtualization service that promises to solve the problem of legacy apps. It can reduce the costs associated with maintaining legacy infrastructure, while providing easy access from any device  something we expect as standard today. ÂWe are proud to be the first company to give customers complete flexibility and choice in migrating their classic systems, either to the cloud or to the latest generation of on-premise servers, said John Prot, CEO of Stromasys. Stromasys is known for its Charon software, which has been used to emulate some of the older DEC systems on x86 hardware for the past 15 years. In Greek mythology, Charon was the ferry man whose task was to transport the dead across the river Styx to Hades, towards their afterlife. Of the 1990s RISC processors, Sun's Sparc and IBM's Power continue. Last week, Oracle reaffirmed its commitment to Sparc, with former CEO Larry Ellison singing praises to the upcoming Sparc M7 during his keynote at the Oracle OpenWorld conference. And IBM has launched the first new Power-based servers since handing management of the architecture to the OpenPower Consortium.
The limiting factor for old-timers is most likely that it's now next to impossible to read those old backup tapes you have moldering in a closet. Mag tape drives are virtually extinct. I was careful to migrate my bits to new formats from time to time, so I have access to archives of my programs from the 70's - not that any of them are actually useful today, except as nostalgia or archeological evidence. I mess around with a simh based pdp-10, it's much faster than any PDP-10 that ever existed.
The lineprinter listings are still perfectly fine. --ms On 2014-10-08 12:25, Dave Dyer wrote:
The limiting factor for old-timers is most likely that it's now next to impossible to read those old backup tapes you have moldering in a closet. Mag tape drives are virtually extinct.
I was careful to migrate my bits to new formats from time to time, so I have access to archives of my programs from the 70's - not that any of them are actually useful today, except as nostalgia or archeological evidence.
I mess around with a simh based pdp-10, it's much faster than any PDP-10 that ever existed.
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On 8 Oct 2014 at 9:49, Dave Dyer wrote:
At 09:37 AM 10/8/2014, Mike Speciner wrote:
The lineprinter listings are still perfectly fine.
Yes, but hard to search, harder to execute. And a fire hazard.
Actually, there has just been good luck scanning and OCR'ing old listings. I had a copy of the old ARPAnet IMP code. And one team managed to OCR it [so it is now searchable!] and another team figured out the assembler for it [I wrote some kind of an awful kludge based on our PDP-1 assembler, but I'll be damned if they didn't manage to get the thing to assemble correctly!!] and another team implements a DDP516 emulator. And there's actually a 5-node ARPAnet *running* on a friend's computer. So listings can be useful and resurrected. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--
If you can believe the TV series "The Americans", the Soviets went to a lot of trouble to steal the ARPAnet IMP code! One episode clearly shows an ARPAnet IMP. "'The Americans' was created by Joe Weisberg, a former CIA officer." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans_%282013_TV_series%29 http://www.tv.com/shows/the-americans-2013/arpanet-2999754/ At 10:06 AM 10/8/2014, Bernie Cosell wrote:
Actually, there has just been good luck scanning and OCR'ing old listings. I had a copy of the old ARPAnet IMP code. And one team managed to OCR it [so it is now searchable!] and another team figured out the assembler for it [I wrote some kind of an awful kludge based on our PDP-1 assembler, but I'll be damned if they didn't manage to get the thing to assemble correctly!!] and another team implements a DDP516 emulator. And there's actually a 5-node ARPAnet *running* on a friend's computer.
And the paper tapes can probably be read by stringing them out, taking a digital picture, and doing a bit of image processing. My two favorite machines were the HP 21MX and the PDP-11 both because of the twinkling lights. On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 9:37 AM, Mike Speciner <ms@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
The lineprinter listings are still perfectly fine.
--ms
On 2014-10-08 12:25, Dave Dyer wrote:
The limiting factor for old-timers is most likely that it's now next to impossible to read those old backup tapes you have moldering in a closet. Mag tape drives are virtually extinct.
I was careful to migrate my bits to new formats from time to time, so I have access to archives of my programs from the 70's - not that any of them are actually useful today, except as nostalgia or archeological evidence.
I mess around with a simh based pdp-10, it's much faster than any PDP-10 that ever existed.
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[Warning: this message contains oldster talk.] I've always kept my data on rotating media. Its density far exceeded my ability to produce digital artifacts. I own about 40 million times more storage today than I did in the 70s. Last year I re-used, verbatim, some few hundred lines of C that I wrote 40 years ago, repurposing it as part of an ipad app. My elisp code base only dates back 35 years, but I use core parts of it daily, as in sending this email message. My sewing machine is about 90 years old. Needs some oil once in a while. Newer machines are not 40 million times better. Hilarie
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 09:25:01 -0700 To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> From: Dave Dyer <ddyer@real-me.net> Subject: Re: [math-fun] Ancient computers still live in cloud heaven
The limiting factor for old-timers is most likely that it's now next to impossible to read those old backup tapes you have moldering in a closet. Mag tape drives are virtually extinct.
I was careful to migrate my bits to new formats from time to time, so I have access to archives of my programs from the 70's - not that any of them are actually useful today, except as nostalgia or archeological evidence.
I mess around with a simh based pdp-10, it's much faster than any PDP-10 that ever existed.
participants (6)
-
Bernie Cosell -
Dave Dyer -
Henry Baker -
Hilarie Orman -
Mike Speciner -
Tom Rokicki