[Info-vax] VAX 6000 on Young Sheldon

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-02-07 18:02, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> On Tue, 2023-02-07 at 16:08 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> I think the noise would be a masssive sleep-killer for most people.
>>> Not a big problem for people like me who are deaf :-D
>>
>> Meh. I had a PDP-8 in my student room while at University. Usually on
>> 24/7. The noise eventually just becomes a non-issue.
> 
> Human nature, isn't it, get used to any situation.

Indeed.

>> At the University itself, I usually hang around in the computer room
>> with two DEC-2060, two VAX-8650 and two PDP-11/70. Although the
>> computer room were in fact divided into two separate rooms with a
>> door between them. But that was a fair amount of noise. And then the
>> cooling system on top of that.
> 
> We never had direct access to the machines. Instead we could only
> access them on our VT220 terminals wired up to terminal multiplexers
> across the various campuses scattered all over Portsmouth (in UK). It
> happens this is also the main Naval base for the Royal Navy too.

Well, I ceased to be a "normal" student pretty quickly, and for most 
everyone else it was also the case that they only sat in front of a 
terminal, in a terminal room, and nowhere near the actual hardware.

The fans on the -8650 are the most fun/noisy/windy things I've 
experienced. The -2060 is larger, but less windy.

The PDP-11/70 is comparatively speaking almost silent. :-D

> Reminds me of the night I broke down right by the Navy base and got two
> men with machine guns in my face :-D. Remember, back in these days they
> were right to be concerned with threats from the Irish provos.

:-D
It was never that crazy in Sweden. Although, there was this one 
VAX-11/782 that sat in a container for quite a while, with dubious 
papers, and an intended destination somewhere in Russia. Never got there 
in the end, but that was a funny one...

   Johnny