“Computer Unit” – A PDP-11/34 at my school (1979)
qmacro.orgSystime was a DEC value added reseller which started with vt52 and vt100 terminals and wound up making vax clones. Famously, they got caught copying circuit boards and avoiding some ipr payments, and tried to bust ITAR export rules to the ussr. naughty!
The BBC nuke drama "edge of darkness" features the systime hq in Leeds.
I worked there briefly in 1982. Fantastic subsidised lunches in the factory canteen, robot delivery carts following magnetic stripes in the flooring, and a lisa workstation in the r&d department i played with.
The head of r&d John Bondi was Herman Bondi's son. (Herman was an Austrian-British mathematician and cosmologist of some note)
Happy days.
(Author of post here) - thank you for these insights and history!
Yes very interesting back in the mid 70's we had access to a PDP at my comprehensive School in Bedfordshire.
Though we didn't have the luxury of a terminal in the school - we sent our work of on coding sheets and got the results back for the next lesson.
We used CECIL (an assembly language designed for education) and in the second year BASIC.
This was the CSE stream BTW aka the stream for those expected to leave school at 16
Love the aesthetic on those machines, very cool.
Late 70s DEC equipment visual designs were great.
Love how everybody in the picture was pair-programming!
Now you point that out, yes - it's true. I remember working through various BASIC PLUS programs that we were creating, a few lines at a time, and, yes, together. On the Superterm terminal there was an exciting element of danger as you might get your finger swiped by the print head as you pointed to a piece of code that needed refactoring :-)