Subj : Re: My Retro Computing
To   : Elf
From : tenser
Date : Mon Aug 09 2021 10:47:05

Retrocomputing is fun, but far and away the most efficient
way to do it is via emulation.  It's faster, cheaper, and
uses less power (where reasonable emulators exist).

My basement is full of VAX and Sun hardware, essentially
none of which gets powered on.  Instead, I've got a multicore
64bit thing running emulators for a number of systems; a
few Pr1me's, a couple of VAXen, an Interdata 7/32 (running
Unix), a few IBM mainframes, a DPS8/m running Multics,
a PDP-10 running TOPS-20, a few PDP-11s running RSTS/E and
various Unix versions.  About the only real hardware I have
running (besides the simulator machine) is an Alpha running
VMS.  Right now, the "family timesharing machine" is a
RISC-V board running OpenBSD. It's all tied together with
services running running on a Plan 9 network.

It's fun, but it's also useful professionally to see how older
systems worked.

I guess there are a couple of 8 bit micros down there, too,
but again most of that stuff works better under emulation than
in real life.

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