[HN Gopher] PiDP-11 - Recreating PDP-11/70 with Raspberry Pi
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PiDP-11 - Recreating PDP-11/70 with Raspberry Pi
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-04-19 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (retroviator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (retroviator.com)
| timonoko wrote:
| Nova 1200 would be easier. Just glass panel painted mostly black
| and regular off-the-shelf switches. Bigger problem is the
| menacing glow of blinkenlichts. Leds will never do.
| wrs wrote:
| Indeed, this era of machine retained a sort of
| "electromechanical" feel that the incandescent bulbs contribute
| to. Not to mention the DECwriter that was usually attached to
| it.
| tyingq wrote:
| There is a kit for an Altair replica which uses simpler
| switches. https://adwaterandstir.com/altair/
| alanlit wrote:
| If the PiDP11 follows Oscar's PiDP8 then the blinkenlights are
| pulse-width-modulated and you do get a warm glow out of them
| rather than a heartless and cold on/off. My recollection is
| that more of the PI's cpu cycles are spent doing this than are
| spent emulating the PDP8 (and, I'm guessing, the PDP11).
| phamilton4 wrote:
| This is awesome! I'm definitely looking at getting one of these
| kits!
| anonymousisme wrote:
| Bought one of these about two years ago. Did some of the
| assembly, but it's still not done.
|
| Looking forward to playing "Super Star Trek" on it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Now that you've got a PDP-11, you can run Empire on it!
|
| https://github.com/DigitalMars/Empire-for-PDP-11
| johnklos wrote:
| I, for one, appreciate these efforts to not only preserve
| history, but to make it available to new generations. There's so
| much that can be learned from these historical machines, and the
| look and feel is part of that :)
| em500 wrote:
| Similar in spirit, a recreation of the VAX-11/780:
| https://vxcompany.com/2016/02/13/a-working-vax-11780-revisit...
| cptnapalm wrote:
| Where does one get that model?
| jf wrote:
| I purchased this as a kit and soldered together myself. It was a
| lot of fun to put together and it's very illuminating to use.
| Happy to answer any questions about the kit or my experiences
| with it.
| williesleg wrote:
| That's pretty sweet, no H1B's there, things actually worked back
| then.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I have the PiDP-11, assembled it myself from the kit.
|
| It was exciting for me to be able to run RSTS/E, which is one of
| the first operating systems I ever worked on. I only wish I had a
| Decwriter to physically connect to it.
|
| And visitors to my office love the blinky lights.
| cesaref wrote:
| I assembled an LSI-11 from bits from various university
| departments back in the late 80s with the intention of getting
| RSTS running, but struggled to find everything I needed (I was
| short of an RL01 I seem to remember). I had lots of fun though,
| and got RT-11 running from 8 inch disk.
|
| The kit looks very cool, and would be significantly more
| convenient than the 19 inch racks I had before :) My how things
| have moved on (for the better).
| anthk wrote:
| Ebay and a serial USB adapter are you friends :).
| fortran77 wrote:
| Nope.
|
| 1. Decwriter terminals are very hard to come by! Haven't seen
| one on eBay in the years I've been searching. Look for
| yourself: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=decw
| riter&_sa...
|
| 2. Don't need a USB Serial Adapter with the PiDP-11. The
| PiDP-11 board will support up to 5 RS-232 ports on it: https:
| //obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11-connec...
| lsllc wrote:
| Or a DataSouth DS-180 dot-matrix printer!
| cptnapalm wrote:
| With this or a PiDP-8, I've idly thought about learning enough to
| write a "terminal operating system" so one could plug it into a
| USB port and get a shell to a Linux or BSD system. That way it
| could be of actual use to the owner after playing with older
| operating systems loses its allure.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Honestly, I've always thought a high quality 3D computer model of
| the entire thing (including the peripherals) would serve the
| purpose of learning about this stuff much better; an added
| benefit: doesn't take space. Learning in the virtual space in
| general has a huge potential. Even watching educational videos
| (like those found in abundance on YouTube) suffices in many
| cases. The age of plastic toys is behind us.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Hard, hard disagree. Nothing beats learning by getting your
| hands on a thing.
| burnte wrote:
| Agreed that hands on is always best, but virtual is great if
| you can lay hands on. PDPs are a bit hard to ship around.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Right? We're talking about the PiDP here, aren't we?
| newswasboring wrote:
| VR can help with that. Not with all things as haptic feedback
| is not not ready yet. But there are people already making
| gloves with feedback for 50 dollars or so.
| watersb wrote:
| Typing stuff, interacting at a virtual terminal, sure.
|
| But if you key in a bootloader via the toggle switches on the
| console, you quickly learn to think in octal (base-8).
|
| If you live with the console blinkenlights for a while, you get
| a sense of roughly what the machine is doing as it winds its
| way through the code.
|
| As with flight simulators, you can learn a great deal with
| virtual machines and simulators. But without tactile feedback,
| you won't quite understand how other people experienced these
| machines.
|
| And much of the programming idioms arise from those
| experiences.
| watersb wrote:
| Oh, those marketing folk who designed the console switches -- how
| often I dreamed of appropriate places to send them for
| education...
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(page generated 2021-04-19 23:00 UTC)