On 03/02/2019 19:06, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Sun, 03 Feb 2019 13:03:16 -0500, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
>
>>  Xerox Sigma-6... Relatively fat machine for the mid-70s
>> (four-bank/four-port, interleaved) 512kB (though I could swear ours was
>> somehow doubled to 1Mb*). On a good day we'd often have between 40 and
>> 60 terminals active, along with the batch queue (we actually had a
>> Honeywell Level-6 being used as a terminal server, replacing racks of
>> Gandalf equipment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandalf_Technologies )
>>
> Different era - I was using the Elliott in 1967/68
>
>>  Pretty sure we had 6 100MB drives, and it was a big thing when we
>> obtained a 300MB drive to be used for swap space.
>>
> Same again - the 1903S was released in 1971 and was a medium scale
> machine - and ours was a fairly small example.
>
>>  The chip could access 1MB, but probably used some of that for
> memory
>> mapped I/O (rather than using the separate I/O port/control that Intel
>> chips supported).
>>
> Sure, but you couldn't physically fit that much RAM into an IBM PC-AT or
> PC-XT
>
> Around 1980 I was working at the BBC, this time on ICL 2966 systems. The
> production system was normally running 11 or 12 different online systems
> that together supported around 400 green-screen 24x80 terminals. This
> mainframe had 16MB of RAM. The development system also served as backup
> for the live system and had even less RAM - 8MB - I never knew how many
> developers it supported, but we were all using it interactively, writing
> interactive systems in COBOL the used IDMSX databases.
>
> Not that any of the above is relevant to my point - which is that before
> multi-colour graphical displays became the norm, personal computers and
> mainframes running typical back-office systems could and did routinely
> use what now look like laughably small amounts of memory.
>
>
Yup. A Pi would definitely outrun a PDP/11 And probably a VAX too.




--
"Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social
conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the
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Alan Sokal

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