Comments by "Lawrence D’Oliveiro" (@lawrencedoliveiro9104) on "DEC PDP-11 u0026 Zork - Computerphile" video.

  1. The per-process virtual address space was only 16 bits.
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  2. Paging was a tricky thing. When we first installed MACSYMA on our VAX-11/780, it behaved very badly. Then our sysadmin edited the .EXE file, changing the page fault cluster size from its default of 16 down to 1, and that improved things a lot.
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  3. You need the lamp. The Grue only eats people in the dark.
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  4. Which was possibly why they had no problems with publishing all their hardware schematics, and letting other companies make copies. Nowadays the company lawyers would be on you like a ton of bricks.
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  5. Customers still wanted them. Even given the close architectural relationship between VAX and PDP-11, there were still people who found it easier to stick to the 16-bit platform.
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  6. RSX (and RT-11) could do async interrupt-driven I/O, unlike RSTS where all I/O calls blocked the process until completion. Only having access to a RSTS machine, I felt jealous. Until VAX/VMS came along ...
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  7. The password was something you could set in the source code.
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  8. Neither -- it was all FORTRAN.
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  9. I would say “my condolences”, but DEC is gone, too...
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  10.  @robertherndon4351  If you want to include that, call it more like 18.6 bits. Oh, and I never said it did.
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  11. Real hardware is amazing ... for those who can afford the space, and the electricity bills.
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