If you've got a bunch of old computer languages under your belt, the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, Washington, wants you.
It's a job that's definitely not for the faint-hearted: as well as being able to handle old IBM, DEC, HP and Control Data Corporation languages, you'd be expected to help create and debug hardware interfaces to the vintage iron in Windows and Linux. You'd be expected to build and maintain the ancient operating systems, help out with hardware development, and because this is low-level stuff, be able to work out what's going on inside the boxes using logic analyzers and oscilloscopes. The duties include helping hunt out the arcana of the computing world, since not only does the job involve running and restoring the iron itself: the spec asks for people who can help locate the applications that used to run on the boxes.
(Score: 2) by Sir Finkus on Tuesday June 10 2014, @05:35PM
I've been to this place a few times, it's pretty awesome. You can play with most of the computers, and the staff is super knowledgeable. You can even get shell accounts on some of the systems if you want to mess around at home.
http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org/ [livingcomputermuseum.org] for more info on the place.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mhajicek on Tuesday June 10 2014, @06:03PM
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html [catb.org]
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by tynin on Tuesday June 10 2014, @06:51PM
Great story! Thanks for sharing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 10 2014, @06:03PM
Send resume HR now! We hire! We hire!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 10 2014, @06:55PM
You know those HR SOBs, the hiring manager will ask for "fourty" years of DEC PDP-8 experience and then HR will complain about too many resumes and boost that to "sixty" years of PDP-8 experience so they don't have to work as hard, even though the GD thing was only released in '65. And then they'll complain that only lying crooks who made it past the criteria and logic puzzle interview process. So lets just hire the bosses cousin, which he wanted to do all along anyways...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 10 2014, @08:26PM
A PDP-5 man could push that back to '63.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday June 11 2014, @02:31AM
That's the problem I have always had with trying to get employment through an HR department.
Yes, I have a passing acquaintance with DEC PDP systems. Mostly at the assembler level and hardware interface. A lot of stuff I was trained on in University as well as my days working in geophysical data logging trucks in the petrochemical industry involved DEC hardware.
Since it was all memory-mapped I/O on the machine, it was a piece of cake to design hardware ports of whatever your imagination came up with. It was all TTL and bus-driver chips in those days. I still have cabinets full of old TTL parts.
However, the Motorola 68000 made the scene, and from what I could tell, it was very similar in power to the PDP and was a heckuva lot easier to implement because cardfuls of TTL were now neatly integrated into one 64 pin plastic DIP ( and later they actually had CMOS versions - the 68HC000, that I could easily run from flashlight cells! Not only that, I no longer had to boot the OS from DECTAPE; I could neatly put it in EPROMS. I still remember loading in the OS mechanically from paper tape on the early machines.).
These days, I am all Arduino. Not necessarily the boards, but the software environment. It supports the C++ I have fallen deeply in love with.
However, if I do not know anyone there. Getting past HR would be a huge issue to me. Geez, I am a senior citizen! Its also been my experience that one has to lie like a dog in order to get a HR-assisted job. I do not like to lie on employment stuff because they are apt to ask me to do what I said I could do, and this would only result in termination for non-performance. Could I do DEC stuff? I have not done it for 30 years, but then I have not fixed a vacuum tube TV in over 40 years... but I still have the tube manuals and feel I could if I had to. I still remember how those old things work.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 10 2014, @06:30PM
LCM is under the thumb of Paul Allen, and his whims.
You've been warned.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 10 2014, @06:44PM
Digital Equipment reopens for business and announces the following upgrades:
* Retroactively refitting the LSI-11 CPU with segment registers.
* Replacing any useful operands with requirement of using two less useful
* Virus compatibility layer
* DEC Ingenious Disadvantage to interrupt any important work with the almighty license turmoil
* Any convinient signals in the expansion bus will be revoked
* The interrupt routing scheme will be reorganized for optimal confusion and subperformance
;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 10 2014, @06:50PM
They re DEC -0 rated?
(Score: 2) by Sir Finkus on Tuesday June 10 2014, @07:01PM
Maybe a little, but all the Windows memorabilia is in its own corner away from the real machines.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 10 2014, @08:18PM
Let's see Paul Allen's card.
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Tuesday June 10 2014, @06:55PM
I still have some IPL card decks that do things like print banners, play songs on nearby radios, etc. Not sure exactly why I still have them, except nostalgia.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 10 2014, @06:59PM
run em in hercules
http://www.hercules-390.eu/ [hercules-390.eu]
http://www.rogerbowler.fr/hercules.htm [rogerbowler.fr]
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Tuesday June 10 2014, @07:26PM
That's reason enough, amigo. Amazing things have happened along the long road of progress; nice to pay some of them the tribute they're due. I'm still attached to an old Handspring organizer from the early days (maybe '99?). It's of no use to me, but I still love it. Newer isn't necessarily better; sometimes it's just different, and often it's just different for the sake of being different.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday June 10 2014, @07:57PM
I suspect they want someone else.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday June 11 2014, @05:14AM
I still have my assembly language book for Compass, the assembler for the Control Data 6000's, 7000's, and Cyber 70's and 170's. However, I'm not a hardware guy. But I still remember a bit about some of the operating system internals. But I'm no hardware guy. Too bad. Would be a fun job.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 11 2014, @04:59PM
Are you a hardware guy or what?