Oscar Vermeulen
@Oscar_CEDS
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Vintage computer nerd
Switzerland
Joined November 2023
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The PiDP-10 is done! The first 50 will be shipped next week. And soon, living rooms everywhere will be flooded with useful 1960s mainframes ;-)
To celebrate (it took 7 years), we also launched a new overview website for our computer replicas:
#pidp10
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Blinkenlights, 't is the season!
You can recognize a PDP-11 operating system when the machine is idling.
One is running a vintage unix, the other a DEC OS. But which is which? Extra hacker creds for recognizing the exact unix version & specific DEC OS :-)
#PiDP11
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Today was the day! We have replica PDP-10 cases! Loads of them. It took us 7 years, but we can *finally* start making the PiDP-10.
#PiDP10
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OK... they tell me I should go on Twitter to tell a bit about the coming PiDP-10. And tell the story of the past year. Scary. social? media? Not really me.
But: in a month or two, you can have a PDP-10 in your living room.
#PiDP10
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PiDP-10 update! Parts for the first kits arrive next week.
Last few weeks were spent improving the back of the case.
If you add fans to the back, tweaked air vents behind them now give a soft but nice mainframe soundscape. Better than the little Raspberry Pi 5 fan.
#pidp10
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The vintage unix quote in /usr/sys/ken/slp.c
on a realish PDP-11, running real unix v6.
You don't need to understand everything you compile, right?
#PiDP11
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Angelo and I are working on a PDP-1 replica. Yes, spacewar. Here is the imperfect first prototype, grafted onto an IKEA bedside table. We really want the demoscene to write PDP-1 demos, they really should get past the C64 :-)
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I keep getting asked, what to do with a PDP-10 replica?
Lots, because
It recreates the entire 1970s MIT AI computer lab.
All this HW + ITS OS & tons of SW: first emacs, spacewar, Mazewar...
Not a replica, a time capsule!
#PiDP10
#MIT
#CSAIL
@MIT_CSAIL
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A PDP-10 in every living room, is the idea.
After years of endless revisions, the PiDP-10 injection mold is now in production. Injection molding is a terrible hobby. But it had to be done, and I think we did a good job.
Spot the difference: 1968 original vs 2023 replica :-)
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Drumming up support for the ITS recreation project!
I spent a lovely sleepless night delving in to Winograd's SHRDLU, the ~1969 AI that moved minds:
One of 100s of PDP-10 programs found on MIT's 'ultimate hacker' ITS OS
#PiDP10
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This weekend I will show the expanding PDP replica range at the
@VCFe_CH
Vintage Computer Festival Zurich, Switzerland. Same stuff to show as last month in Berlin :-)
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Season's greetings from vintage PDP-11 unix. Real unix.
Rene Richarz wrote these TU-56 tape drive & Tektronix simulators (). Add-ons that add enough seasonal ambiance to allow my
#PiDP11
into the living room this month :-)
Thank you Rene!
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Waiting for PiDP-10 kit parts to arrive, I spent the weekend drafting a useless add-on. Kicad's 3D viewer is good, but refused to render switches. Anyway. You get the idea.
PDP-10s had a Maintenance Panel & with the internet obsessing about RasPi 5 power needs- why not add this?
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The PiDP-10 replica runs SHRDLU - an amazing 1968/1970 AI demo that triggered the first AI 'summer' .
Tons of money were thrown into AI after this demo. But a demo isn't the same as a functioning program. Winter came soon after summer. Still, impressive!
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I met Guy Fedorkow at VCF Berlin, he reconstructed the 1945 Whirlwind computer. Replica plans underway, although smaller than the original🙂
Whirlwind, grandfather of DEC's PDP range, was the first interactive (not batch-processing) computer.
Archaelogy:
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This was fun! Two guys hacked my PiDP-11 with a stack buffer overflow. Maybe it's a new hobby. Quality time on the PDP11, collecting vintage 2.11BSD exploits:
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How old computing is not per se worse than modern computing - so spot on.
One fascination I have - software on the PDP-8 in 1974 was in many ways *better* than what ran on IBM PCs a decade later. Strange how good things get lost, software evolution is not an optimal path at all
War of the workstations: How the lowest bidders shaped today's tech landscape
The MIT and New Jersey schools of software design, and how big lies turned into holy truths
<- by me on
@TheRegister
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You can still visit the Vintage Computer Festival in Zurich tomorrow, Sunday! Well, if you are in Switzerland.
Great event, great atmosphere!
#vcfzh23
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My PiDP-11 boots into Idled by default. Not just some code to animate the Blinkenlights without booting an OS.
Nope. It's a PDP-11 *poem in 64 words* by Mike Hill.
Think you really know PDP-11 assembly?
Read the poem here (PDF):
I admit defeat.
#PiDP11
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Adapted my
#PiDP11
to accept the new Pi 5.
To use Pi 5's new RP1, I hated the bloated GPIO libs.
Just pushing simple bits, so why 1000s of instructions & object-oriented conceptual crap through Linux kernel?
But pinctrl sources are nice! Easy to reuse:
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So all I read about the Raspberry Pi 5 is it needs a fan.
And I hate fan noise.
Run 2 1080p videos & emulate 2 PDP-11 unix systems with 4 users, yes, fan at lowest speed.
Without playing movies the fan never turns on in real life. What a great, great little board! Fanless❤️
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Some good calls! Actually, it is 2.11 BSD unix at the top and RSX-11M Plus at the bottom. But I had forgotten... RSTS-E has a pattern like BSD, see below. So -1 point for me for forgetting that. RSTS-E is underappreciated in the PDP-11 retro world! Here it is...
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@SteveMaves
@reinhs
Ah, it's too late now to do market research :-) We went ahead and made the kit. It 'had to be done'... not very professional but I had been sitting on this for 5 years and when I got some help, I just made the jump.
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@BioHJM
Hi! Just join the PiDP-10 google group, I will bother you with a message once I have them ready to send out :-)
(I'm new to Tweeting, fun to meet people here I already know :-))
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@svenpetersen191
Very... it's more than half a meter wide, doing the injection mold was an insane decision. Typical example of a project getting totally out of hand. But I'm happy now it's done.
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@mrdoornbos
Yes, there just is something about a minimalist computer - you can understand the instruction set in minutes, then find out that doing something 'right' with it is hard. The Eight is just a great machine to dig into.
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@reinhs
I'm pretty scared, actually. We had to buy parts in quantity to get to affordable parts prices. It feels like I put my head into a noose. Oh well. OCD, what can you do about it...
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@b_mcnett
Good luck with the build! Let me know if you encounter any problems. Yes, a new PiDP. This one took 5 years to develop, but it's almost done now. More OSes to master :-)
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@Computeum
Danke vielmal :-)
Ach ja, ein paar Gründe. Aber lobt den Herrn – ein Betriebssystem ohne Passwörter!
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@switenky
We planned to use the I2C pins for that. Should be possible using some DAC chips. Oh, the to-do list...
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@AmyH70
Thank you! It's a very exciting day for me, I waited a long time for this to happen :-)
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@affectedspider
@systems_glitch
There's a cheap IKEA book case that seems to fit perfectly. I will have to try for myself :-)
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@traqpl
@globalgamejam
Nice! No submarine should be without Blinkenlights.
There is, in fact, one actual submarine with a PiDP-11 in its instrument racks. Although not for any practical purpose :-)
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@Raffzahn
Yes. But my pleasant surprise was that with any 'normal' load, the fan won't come on at all. Might be different when I try emulating a PDP-10 with shared-memory PDP-6, a PDP-11 plus all the other hardware Lars is simulating from the MIT Labs. But for now, fanless is fine. Nice!
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@smallbutsharp1
@larsbrinkhoff
Actually, log in to the online ITS system here and chances are you will find a well-known ITS hacker from the past (and from the present!):
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@mass_werk
We should. But the simulator works at a very low level, it simulates the electric pulses in the circuit rather than emulating at the instruction level. Not sure we have the Type 33 schematics :-(
On the to-do list though!
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@chan_lambda
Yes - there will for sure be an FPGA-instead-of-Pi option. Like there was for the PiDP-8 and -11 as well.
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@herdware
Thank you! I have a PiDP-10 Google Group - if you join I will bother you with an email when I *finally* have the kit ready :-)
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@branchpredict
Yes...my hobby. Or perhaps obsession? All useful things are already being done so I crank out obsolete computer kits
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@branchpredict
Sure! Just Google for pidp-11 and you will find my obsolescence guaranteed page!
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@BinaryDinosaurs
Nice thing of pinctrl is, main() is a demo for what it can do and the rest is in C files that you can just compile in to your project. And it'll work for GPIO on all generations of Pi. Without passing through the Linux kernel ❤️
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