Many things

[Tony Duell]

> 
> >Please don't take this as a flame, but I am always suprised by the people
> >who run classic computers (as opposed to running emulators) and who don't
> >want to get into the hardware. To me [1] that's one of the reasons for
> >running an old machine.
> 
> Trust me, I don't take it as a flame, we just have different area's 
> of interest.  My area of interest is primarily in the Operating 

Sure...

> Systems that run on the various platforms, and I'm coming to the 
> conclusion that I'm better served by emulators in most cases.  I'd 
> really like to dig in and learn the hardware on my PDP-8's, and even 
> the -11's at a very low level, but I simply do not have the time.

Well, while I doubt I could write an OS from scratch (or a compiler, 
or...), I have been known to read source listings, make (small) changes, 
and so on. If you turn that round, while I don't think everyone needs to 
know how to _design_ a CPU (or whatever), it's helpful if you have some 
idea how they work, and how to find faults, etc...

Of course there is the big difference that correctly working hardware can 
fail (a component can go out-of-spec), correctly working software 
doesn't. But anyway...


-tony