If a PDP-8 minicomputer can’t help with Greece, who can?


.BASIC
NEW OR OLD--OLD
FILE NAME--HELLO.BA

READY
RUN

HELLO BA 5A

HELLO, MY NAME IS PETEY P. EIGHT.

WHAT’S YOUR NAME ?BEARDY

HI THERE BEARDY. ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF HERE
IN THIS WONDERFUL PLACE?YES

OH, I’M GLAD TO HEAR THAT BEARDY

SAY, BEARDY, I CAN SOLVE ALL KINDS OF PROBLEMS
EXCEPT THOSE DEALING WITH GREECE. WHAT KIND OF
PROBLEMS DO YOU HAVE (ANSWER SEX, HEALTH, MONEY,
OR JOB)?

Not even a DEC PDP-8 (simulated in SIMH) running OS/8 and a BASIC program, HELLO.BA, can help with Greece!

Guess if I dropped my jaw in surprise and amusement when I read that, when playing around with a simulated historic computer just now. If not even that can help to solve the problems of/with Greece, I guess they’re doomed!

On another note, SIMH is a great thing, the DEC PDP-8 minicomputer (from 1965) seems to have been a nice machine in its days, and OS/8 quite a decent OS for its time and environment. Expect another post on SIMH and simulating/emulating old computers shortly.