UNIX Arcana [was Re: Perl (or Unix vs. MS, actually) ]

[Jerry Feldman]

Discussed that last night at the BLU meeting. 
Many of the PDP-8s did not come with a ROM. To load the executive, you 
would key in the RIM(ReadInMode) loader on the front panel switches. The 
RIM loader was a very simple paper tape reader program whose purpose was to 
read in the real paper tape loader. From there you could reload the PDP-8.

Burger King's point of Sale system in the early 1970s was a PDP-8M with 4 
attached registers. No disk, no paper tape, core memory. For the modem, we 
had to time the 1200 baud with timing loops and send a bit at a time. No 
UART. We also had to strike the hammers on the printer drum. Keyboard 
required to reads (row and column). If the system crashed, a service guy 
had to come in, plug in the paper tape board, and reload the program. 
On 22 Aug 2002 at 8:36, bscott at ntisys.com wrote:
>   Okay, I have to ask: What's a "RIM loader"?

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
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