The next addition to this series once the PiDP-10 is released should be the PiDP-1.
Upon its release, we will have a reproduction of the entire chronology of hacker culture, featuring three of the most iconic computers in history: the PDP-1 (Spacewar, TECO, LISP, DDT), the PDP-10 (ITS, emacs, TeX, Scheme), and the PDP-11 (UNIX). These three machines stand as the primary ancestors of GNU/Linux and the BSDs. What an exciting era to be alive as a computer hobbyist!
Maybe this could launch a small industry as well. I wouldn't mind having small scale "blinkenlights" replicas of other iconic machines too - the EDSAC, the Bull Gamma 60, the IBM 360/40, the CDC 6600 and the Cray 1 come to mind, but finding software for them would be the hard part.
No, F that. PiVAX 9000 incoming. We have the technology. I want a room sized replica of the computer that helped ruin the only decent employer in my state for a generation.
I need to experience the majesty of SID scalar and vector processor synthesis for myself.
I think the handwriting was on the wall when the VAX 8600 was introduced. It was introduced 7ish years after the 11/780, and was only a few times faster. Today, in the twilight years of Moore's Law, a factor of a few speedup over 7 years would not be all that bad, but back then it was shocking. I felt the VAX line was a slowly sinking ship from that point on.
Also, the PRISM/MICA project got cancelled so Dave Cutler (and whomever he took with him) left for Microsoft.
Then they tried MIPS for a while, and I think(?) PRISM became the basis for the Alpha. Also the other 'minicomputers' - IBM AS/400 came out in 1988, and the HP3000 switched to PA-RISC.
I would choose a VAXi-11/780 if its appearance wasn't so plain and dull. In comparison, the early PDP-10s, particularly the KA-10 and KI-10, are charming. They are probably the epitome of computer aesthetic alongside the 11/40-45-70 series.
I'm uncertain about the 'A' in KA, it might suggest that it was the initial release.
'I' stands for 'Integrated', as it was the first PDP-10 CPU to utilize ICs, and 'L' stands for 'LSI'.
There was also the ill-fated KC-10, which was unfortunately killed for various reasons, both technical and strategic as it was competing with the 11/780. It was to use integrated NAND chips like the 11/750 (or even the Cray 1). I'm not sure what the 'C' stood for.
Oh, I should also mention the small KS-10, which had a mini form factor (the DEC10-20 was a mainframe). I guess you can figure what the 'S' stood for.
Alas, not all Novas have front panels either. Cray supported a couple of different front ends; I dunno what the options were for the Cray-1, but in the mid-80s the PSC X/MP-48 was front-ended by a VAX cluster.
This is a great kit and a lot of fun. I have one (and one of his PiDP-8's and as soon as they are available one of his Dec 10 ones :-)
So its neat and retro and blinking lights right? It's also art (for the nerds in the house) and who doesn't currently have a Raspberry Pi doing misc stuff on their net at home right? So mine, while looking gorgeous is also running PiHole, the ad and ad-tracker eating DNS service, as well as providing network surveillance for weird stuff going on. So functional and pretty.
2. I wish the build would have used something like an MCP23017 for IO instead of claiming so many RPi GPIOs. There's only a few (2-3 IIRC) GPIOs unused by the front panel, and the matrix LED/switch scan setup burns a ton of CPU
I read his description of the LEDs being powered by brute force looping...even though he uses a buffer IC, the CPU still does the monotonous and continuous looping to keep the LEDs intermittently supplied with current.
I wish he had used a few MAX7219 LED driver ICs - they just need 4 IO pins, can be chained together, and don't need any maintenance CPU cycles unless a change in config is desired.
They also ensure perfect brightness control, and are current controlled LED drivers instead of using 330 Ohm resistors that waste power...all power goes to illuminating the LEDs and none is wasted as heat in resistors.
Maybe I should write him and offer my help in switching for the next spin of the PCBs.
Incidentally, the DEC J-11 PDP-11-on-a-chip is still available[0] and can easily[1] be hooked up to other required hardware (I mean, the thing has a monitor/debugger built in, what’s not to like?).
Very sad to what happen to Hong Kong. Fallen no doubt. But still not vanish and the machine should reach it still. Sadly no order link. Whilst might be arrested, china is not Hong Kong in posting.
I want to mention another awesome project, which implements PDP-11 on FPGA and can be used with PiDP-11 panel. (PiDP-11 by default uses software emulator running on Raspberry Pi.)
I got one of these kits a few years ago and can highly recommend it. It was a ton of fun to build and play with. I found an old VT-100 clone on eBay and hooked mine up to it for even more retro fun.
There's lots of additional resources out there too. I was learning Forth at the time and found a bootable image that runs perfectly on the PiDP, documented here: https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-11/c/qIjZeA_WCPU
It says you can't buy them, but I see them for sale on Tindie[1] and it looks to be from the same person, though I don't see links to Tindie on their wix site, but I could be missing them. Anyone have any more info?
I would believe the Tindie status moreso than the article from a few years ago. I've had zero issues with stock counts on Tindie, but you can contact him via the store there.
> I’m not done yet. I may enable a serial terminal connection for the PDP-11 emulator, and I will continue exploring the PDP and Raspberry Pi software.
Would be neat to connect a VT220 to if they get the serial port working.
It's been a while since I built mine, but I'm pretty sure it supports 4 serial interfaces. At any rate, Oscar had a VT220 hooked up to a PiDP-11 at VCF ZH 2019.
Yes it supports up to 4 serial interfaces given the ports available on the Pi. You can use small USB-to-RS232 converters, and/or use the built-in USB-to-serial plus additional USB-to-serial converters and solder two MAX232 chips on the board.
Sure, but to what end? You've got 4 RS-232 devices, plus the Pi's onboard TTL serial console, and the VDU console as well. A TU-58, a papertape reader and punch, a plotter...?
I have a PDP-11/05 with 16KB core in my home lab. Haven't powered it up in a decade since getting rid of my Teletype ASR 33 for space reasons. I need to cobble up a 20mA current loop interface to talk to it. This PiDP-11 is much more energy-efficient, the /05 really heats up the room!
My first paying job as an undergrad was maintaining a remote job entry system running on a PDP-11. It was a revelation that the instruction set was simple, orthogonal, and made sense. Computers could be elegant! Later I had a full time job maintaining an driver written in C and 68k assembler and that PDP-11 experience was a big help. 32-bit x86 by comparison looked messy and weird, when I had to grok that for a gig ploughing through an impossibly large pile of Mitch Kapor's code at Lotus trying to track down and fix bugs.
My first job after graduation was programming and running a PDP-8 in a Psych lab (my degree was in Psychology with a minor in Computer Science). Data transfer was interesting from today's perspective. I would have to print out data to a teletype machine with the paper tape writer turned on, then take the paper tape to the computer center (where the Burroughs B5500 lived) load the paper tape into a teletype machine connected to the mainframe, and after that the mainframe would output the data on punched cards. After all the typos were corrected on the punched cards, the Psych Grad students could run their data analysis using programs also on punched cards.
One interesting episode I remember to this day was when we got some error messages from the PDP-8. I ran a diagnostic that said the one of the boards in the computer was experiencing intermittent errors. I ran a diagnostic which said yes one of the boards was failing. We had a maintenance contract, so I called DEC and they sent out a repair person. He ran the diagnostic again and confirmed that a board was failing. I expected him to just replace the board. But No! He pulled the board out of the computer, unsoldered a transistor, and soldered in a new transistor. After running the diagnostic to confirm that the problem was fixed he went on his way and we were back in business. Nowadays if you get a hardware failure you have to replace an entire Motherboard, or a memory board.
Cool! The 11/70 I worked on had a defective floating point unit for a while; when it overheated it would start garbling MUL results. I don't suppose this has that "feature" :-)
I got as far as running RSTS/E on a pi connected to a DECWriter III paper terminal. I never ordered the kit, though I wanted to. I was moving though and decided I’d exhausted my nostalgic needs.
It’s a fun moment playing DUNGEO and ADVENT on green bar again.
Is there any product that you can just plug a monitor and keyboard into and have a dumb terminal? Something much more dedicated and less than a RaspberryPi which is overkill for something so simple.
Upon its release, we will have a reproduction of the entire chronology of hacker culture, featuring three of the most iconic computers in history: the PDP-1 (Spacewar, TECO, LISP, DDT), the PDP-10 (ITS, emacs, TeX, Scheme), and the PDP-11 (UNIX). These three machines stand as the primary ancestors of GNU/Linux and the BSDs. What an exciting era to be alive as a computer hobbyist!
Maybe this could launch a small industry as well. I wouldn't mind having small scale "blinkenlights" replicas of other iconic machines too - the EDSAC, the Bull Gamma 60, the IBM 360/40, the CDC 6600 and the Cray 1 come to mind, but finding software for them would be the hard part.