Re: Gary's Recollections of Delta

[Ralph Gonzalez <rgonzale@ibl.bm>]

Ralph Gonzalez wrote:

> Philip Bernosky wrote:
>
> > I'm happy for everyone that's re-living the PDP years with simulators, etc.
> > HOWEVER, I'm extremely happy with my 400MHz Pentium-II (upwards of
> > 1.6BILLION operations per second) with high-performance 3D acceleration,
> > 128MBytes of RAM, DVD-player, 8GBytes harddrive and full GUI interface.
> > Personally, I don't need RSTS or Basic-plus. But I'm happy if you guys are.
> > Really.
>
> I'd be happy with that too, except Win NT/Win 95 sucks...

Seriously, the point is HISTORY. History is what got us all here, and
it is important to remember the lessons of the past "or else we're doomed
to wind up back here again" (to paraphrase). I'm sure most readers of
this list have high end personal computers, and many probably use
more powerful workstations. But it's good to get a perspective on the
technical, intellectual, and social structures which existed in our high
school days (Phil and I went to Newark High together, so I can kid him).

What are our innermost goals and desires and where did they come from?
Many of us who were drawn to computing in the "early" days did it because
it gave us a sense of accomplishment and "triumph" which was missing
from our lives, or perhaps we didn't feel accepted by our peers and
didn't have a social life, or perhaps it's something else... The thing is that
anytime someone is "driven" to become successful at something,
there is a reason, and it's often as much social as it is technical or
intellectual. It is useful to look back on our formative years with an
adult perspective, and reevaluate our motivations.

Likewise, technologically, ancient machines and operating
systems have huge historical significance because they illustrate
the beginnings of and the advance of technology -- how one
idea leads to another and how technology itself advances the
creation of new ideas.

Anyway, I've found all this discussion to be interesting and relevant,
even though obviously in the present world there's no relevance
to a simulated RSTS system.
--
Ralph Gonzalez
rgonzale@ibl.bm