An amusing photo
Here's a publicity photo from about 1972, showing Ken and me
in front of a PDP-11.
From the right, the major items of equipment are
- At the far right, on the table, are what someone discerned
was a VT01A storage-tube display (based on Tek 611) and
a small keyboard for it. Slightly hard to make out.
- A main CPU
cabinet, partly behind the table. The processor is a PDP-11/20;
it must have been our second one, with the Digital Special
Systems KS-11 memory management unit. Our very first just
said "PDP11," not "11/20." The arrays of
distorted rectangles above it and in other cabinets are the
labels on DECtape canisters.
- Another cabinet.
Careful examination of the image by Steve Westin
detects the top of the bezel of an 11/45 CPU barely peeking
above the TTY to the right of the one Ken is typing at.
A paper tape reader is above it.
- The third cabinet sports a dual DECtape drive at the top.
- A cabinet with another DECtape drive, probably also containing BA-11
extension boxes within.
- A cabinet with RK03 disk drives. These were made by Diablo
(subsumed by Xerox) and OEMed to Digital.
Digital later began manufacturing their own version (RK05).
- A cabinet containing RF11/RS11 controller and
fixed-head disks. By this time / and swap space lived there,
while /usr was on the RK03s.
- On top of the machine are what look like magtapes.
A probable TU10 transport is barely visible just below Ken's chin,
at least if you have the monitor brightness and contrast adjusted
favorably.
In front, we have
- Ken (sitting) and me (standing), both with more luxuriant
and darker hair than we have now.
Scientific American March 1999 p. 48
should have checked the IDs; we're interchanged in
its caption of this same picture.
-
Two Teletype 33 terminals
If you want a giant (2.1 MB) JPEG version at higher resolution,
click here).
More pictures of PDP-11 equipment
are available in John Holden's collection.