alaspooryorick

I've been reminiscing lately, about Project Athena of all things. I remember when I first got to MIT, Project Athena consisted pretty much of IBM RTs, Decstatation and Vaxstation 2000s and 2100s. The first year, I'd stay up until dawn downloading porn (via newsgroup; we didn't have web browsers) and playing on MUDs.

I think it was in '91 that they added a lab of IBM RS6000s, which smoked the aforementioned boxes. Alas, it was not too long before that cluster was constantly full, though they did add a smattering of RS6000s elsewhere. Even though the project was officially over in '91, they continued to make improvements (I guess they still do, but most people connect via t-1 from their own computer in their dorm).

It was in '92 and '93, my last year, that they brought in Dec 3100s with big beautiful grayscale monitors and Dec 5000s in color. (the rs6000s were also color, but most of the other machines were b/w). By this time, I was long done with MUDs and was using the system for work - C, numerical analysis and chaos theory - more than anything else.

I worked in the Plasma Fusion Center doing research with a PDP11-73 which was already decrepit by any standard of the day.