[rescue] DEC keyboards

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Steve Jones <smj+rescue at crash.com>
>Date: 2006/11/13 Mon AM 01:55:55 CST
>To: rescue at sunhelp.org
>Subject: Re: [rescue] DEC keyboards

<snip>

>Here's a testamonial that's supposed to be from the following URL, but
>I seem to be having trouble reaching it tonight:
>
>   http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-vax/1999/07/01/0005.html
>
>   The DECpc 433 WS, the first "real" PC from Digital (discounting the
>   dreadful rebadged Olivettis before that and the VAXmate). The DECpc
>   433 WS was a sweet machine at the time, manufactured by Intel for
>   DEC from DEC's specifications. Built-in TIGA graphics, built-in
>   Ethernet and built-in SCSI. All in a very slim and elegant box...
>   sold well, too.
>
>Poster was one Gunnar Helliesen <gunnar at bitcon.no>.

I just recycled one of these - I kept the "SCSI" slice (it takes a couple 50 pin SCSI drives and has room for a standard SCSI CD-ROM device.

It was an interesting machine, but I reached a point where I could no longer justify holding on to a 80486-based machine...

The graphics hardware limited the software you could run on it, since it was so special - at the time I had just used some high-end graphics cards on an IBM PC/AT with add-in 68000 co-processor cards and TGA (TIGA sounds wrong, but my memory is fuzzy) graphics processor for creating animations frame-by-frame to 3/4" tape (what a fun noise that process made - rewind, get up to speed, write a frame onto tape, then slow down, wait, then rewind, get up to speed, write a frame onto tape, then slow down, wait...)...

Lionel