> On Mar 12, 2019, at 10:10 PM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hmmm, are these the atex racks seen lurking in the background of that recent
> storage space trawl down near Houston?
>
> https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-DEC-PDP-11-34-Minicomputer-With-Kennedy-Tape-Drive-J11-CPU-2-Terminals/123688125244
Interesting. Atex is, or was at one time anyway, a manufacturer of typesetting
systems for newspapers. DEC was also in that business with Typeset-11 (TMS-11)
but Atex was more successful, certainly for smaller newspapers because it used
less expensive PDP11 models.
The "multi-processor bus" thing is curious. And I wonder what the terminals
are like. If they are typesetting terminals, I think they support some sort of
WYSIWYG editing setup -- that too was a competitive advantage vs. the "mark-up"
approach (sort of like Runoff on steroids) that Typeset-11 offered. Looking at
the keyboards would give a clue.
The "11-34 minicomputer... J-11 CPU" description is a bit strange. Possibly a
dual CPU setup with one of each? But that seems strange because those two are
from different generations, and interfacing them together would be tricky and
not all that useful.
paul
