Soul of an Old Machine
Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder's 1981 book The Soul of a New Machine told the story of a crash project to develop a new 32-bit minicomputer at Data General. Not long after it was published, another team -- the University of Texas at Austin, DECsystem-10 (PDP-10) staff -- was in the process of decommissioning an old machine.
UT's DEC-10 was one of UT's first timesharing systems .. the first really snazzy one .. and high tech stuff at the time. For this occasion (the shutting down of an old friend; replaced with a DECsystem-20) Clive Dawson (tallest guy, black and white photo) penned Soul of an Old Machine and it still makes for a good read. As Clive put it, this was a "vanishing breed .. they don't make 'em with lights anymore" !
(oh, yours truly with antennae, front row .. it was after all Halloween).
