2 ms·
This is the site that convinced me to seek out and buy a PDP-8 of my own back in 2008. Not a PiDP-8, a 1971 PDP-8/e with 12KW of core memory, a TU56 DECtape, a
by theodric 3y ago
This is the site that convinced me to seek out and buy a PDP-8 of my own back in 2008. Not a PiDP-8, a 1971 PDP-8/e with 12KW of core memory, a TU56 DECtape, a VC8E vector boardset, and a couple teletypes. And then a '73 8/m. And a '75 8/f. And many, many boards and gizmos. And and and. It's been a 6-digit...mistake? Investment? Hobby? Labor of love?
They're not particularly powerful computers, particularly in 2023 - basically a microcontroller in today's terms - but man are they visceral.
SIMH does a good job of letting you run PDP-8 software, but if you want to poke around inside a PDP-8 I really recommend Brian Shelburne's PDP8MAIN simulator (for DOS, but runs perfectly in DOSBox). You can get everything you need here: https://github.com/rrutt/PDP8/tree/master https://github.com/rrutt/PDP8/tree/master
A PDP-8 programmer's reference from 1969 is available here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp8/handbooks/IntroToProgramming1969.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp8/handbooks/IntroToProgr...
It's a lovely system. Extremely minimal, but capable and entertaining.
- accrual 3y ago> but man are they visceral. This is what I find so interesting about these old machines. You can see, feel, and hear them computing in the open. One could easily probe all over and find signals. They soak up power and are beasts of machines, yet they could run modern-ish software if coerced. Fascinating.
- nicetryguy 3y ago> DOSBox I would highly recommend PCem instead, DOSbox has a bunch of quirks that make non-gaming software fail in unexpected ways. I've been down this unfortunate rabbit hole... PCem does require a bit more setup than DOSbox, but once you have a system configuration or three in place, it is just lovely to use.
- helf 3y ago[dead]