Sentimentality is rampant in a new TechRepublic poll asking IT people: “What classic system do you wish you worked on or miss working on?” As the vote total neared 400, Digital Equipment Corporation’s VAX was the hands-down leader with almost 40 percent of the vote.
Cray came in at 24 percent, Burroughs at nine and the Tandem NonStop at three percent. Numerically, the second-place slot was “other,” which included a number of splinter votes for well-known classics such as the IBM 360/40, Digital PDP-10/11 and even the Wang VS series.
Typical of the nostalgia the poll provoked was this comment by an IT old-timer from Des Moines: “From the early 60′s where the computers such as military or Philco-Bendix analog mainframes were all vacuum tube and core memory, to the transistorized IBM1401 and Honeywell H200, GE 400 and 600 and then integrated-circuit Honeywell 6000 Series and NEC 9000 mainframes, Multics systems, and personal computers from Kaypro to Compac to Dell, I’ve got a lot of memories. Most by now are good ones, with a few not-so-fun memories which still remind me that computers often do what they want to do and it’s up to you to keep up. But it’s been a great ride watching Moore’s law in action.”