The wall of orange: DEC's manuals

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1

I struggled a bit to find a photo of the well-known wall of orange phenomenon, but here’s one from Brian Conlon’s pages on the totalisator:

image

There’s also a version in the wikipedia page for RSTS/E:

This is a photograph of a bookshelf containing the complete operating system document set for RSTS/E. A complete set takes up 3 feet of bookshelf area which is why half of these 3-ring binders are placed in this bookshelf backward. This picture does not display any information from the interior of these binders that could be considered proprietary and therefore should be fair use to view.

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You got me nostalgic for the wall of binders at my college for the SunOS workstations we had. Not that they were particularly helpful to me, but it was nice to know they were there.

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Here is my “box of orange” containing the RT-11 5 docs:

IMG_20200627_153346054
IMG_20200627_1533460544160×3120 3.21 MB

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4

I still have the complete Ultrix-32 set, stuffed somewhere in my attic :sweat_smile:

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5

In my DEC years I had the RSX-11M and VAX/VMS set in my office. The yearly update took a day between Christmas and New Year ! Never seen better quality documentation!
The orange became dull gray later. Photos of my office 1990.

veghel2
veghel2664×552 230 KB
kast dec
kast dec1920×1080 456 KB

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Before the orange they were blue - like RSX-11 V3. 2. Yes, DEC had a great staff of technical writers. I’m still working with VMS daily since 1981 V2. 0.

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