27 ms·

Tech nostalgia enthusiasts have made a PiDP-10, a replica of the PDP-10

61 points by zdw 2y ago

rst 2y ago
Correction -- it's a 2:3 scale model of a PDP-10 front panel, concealing a Raspberry Pi running an emulator. In the original equipment, the panel would have been attached to one of several racks containing the CPU and main memory, cabled up to peripherals (tape drives like in '60s movies, disk drives the size of washing machines) through wires under the false floor of a dedicated computer room... The PiDP-10 accurately models the console, but it doesn't depict the rest of this at all.
- dws 2y ago
  Full authenticity would also require raised flooring, and an audio track of people shouting "SAVE YOUR FILES!" whenever the lights flickered.
  - gumby 2y ago
    The KA-10 had core memory (except for the instruction counter and locations 0-15 which were general purpose registers which were implemented in DTL). So when the power went out you could just restart, except for the running process. Bad news if that was the monitor of course.
    - tzs 2y ago
      An interesting thing about the KA-10 is that those DTL registers were optional. Architecturally the registers are simply the first 16 words of core memory. If you bought the fast register option with your KA-10 they installed the DTL registers which overlaid the first 16 words of core. A consequence of that was that anything that took a memory address could access the registers as memory. Just give it an address in [0,15]. That included the program counter. Load code in 0-15 and jump to it and it would run quite a bit faster than if it were in core if your KA-10 had the fast register option.
Pet_Ant 2y ago
How long till someone ports NetBSD to it now that it’s more viable? There was work in the past: http://www.jp.netbsd.org/ports/pdp10/ http://www.jp.netbsd.org/ports/pdp10/
- rnewme 2y ago
  Sadly it's just RPI inside
  - Pet_Ant 2y ago
    Does that matter? As long as system level instructions are emulated. I’m sure you could also whip up an FPGA if you wanted to. http://pdp10.froghouse.org/ http://pdp10.froghouse.org/ http://www.fpgaretrocomputing.org/pdp10x/ http://www.fpgaretrocomputing.org/pdp10x/ https://github.com/KS10FPGA/KS10FPGA https://github.com/KS10FPGA/KS10FPGA I haven’t checked, but I’m fairly certain it’s too big for Tiny Tapeout, so ASIC is out of the question unless you want to crowd source an older geometry.
    - Taniwha 2y ago
      TT supports multi block projects now, might be doable
  - boznz 2y ago
    It could be almost any $0.50 microprocessor from 2024 and still have more vastly horsepower than any PDP8 ever had.
    - shrubble 2y ago
      The PDP10 was a 36-bit CPU with up to a few MIPS of compute power, however.
  - larsbrinkhoff 2y ago
    If you're going to make flip chips, let me know.
anamax 2y ago
There seems to be at least one commercially available PDP-10 clone - https://xkl.com/about/ https://xkl.com/about/
- gumby 2y ago
  That page does tell you Len Bosack founded XKL but IIRC (that was long ago!) it was Cisco’s original plan to make a PDP-10 clone, and they sold SUNET routers to fund the work. It was a rather successful pivot to make the routers the main business. Another company that used that same hardware to get going was Sun Microsystems, though their initial plan didn’t change.
garciasn 2y ago
I have the PiPDP11 and I had a ball putting it together. I love watching it blink at me all day; it’s soothing and it was gratifying to do. I plan on getting the 8 and 10 someday and putting those together too. Such a great kit. Highly recommended.
boznz 2y ago
DEC Number #2 in computing during the 80's, bought by Compaq, bought by HP and now almost unknown. How the mighty fall.
- nobody9999 2y ago
  >DEC Number #2 in computing during the 80's, bought by Compaq, bought by HP and now almost unknown. How the mighty fall. Ken Olsen had a flair for being a bit over the top -- which makes the following quite amusing given how things worked out: One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our support for UNIX? Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there. -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984 Source: https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/toc_id/1-0-2/s/77 https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/to...
  - vasco 2y ago
    Does anyone know what the name of this old VMS documentation is? I'd like to have a search for it so I could see if I can find a copy. Specially if it's 5 feet of old technical docs, I collect this type of thing.
    - nobody9999 2y ago
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Curious Marc did a video on this recently. Did I see it on HN? https://youtu.be/E0Pp63gsdZI https://youtu.be/E0Pp63gsdZI
- hggh 2y ago
  > Did I see it on HN? Probably, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40633068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40633068
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Recent discussion just last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40622671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40622671
ChuckMcM 2y ago
I've got one of these and its glorious if you fondly remember the PDP-10 as I do. Yes, its just being emulated on a Raspberry Pi, but seriously running a "real" one generates several kW of heat and required even more kW of power. Not to mention space. I do have a couple of "real" PDP-8s (an 8/e, 8/f, 8/m and most of an 8/a) but I rarely run them because they take a lot of power and they are noisy. I've got a PiDP-11/70 which is running RSX-11M and Pi-hole and DHCP and logs the iOT temperature widgets I built. So it looks good, and does helpful things. Not to mention you can SSH to it and get your RSX-11M console right there :-). So while you don't get the visceral response of a "real" one, 90% of the time you were never in the same room as one in the first place, it ran in the machine room and you were in a room next door typing on a VT100 (or VT-52 ewwww!)
- wkat4242 2y ago
  > but seriously running a "real" one generates several kW of heat and required even more kW of power. No, both are the same :) It converts the power into exactly the same amount of heat, save for a tiny fraction in light from the bulbs which eventually ends up as heat as well. Totally agree you wouldn't run these at home though. We had a PDP-11 at college and even there they didn't like to switch it on. Never saw a PDP-10 though. I have the PiDP-8 and -11 replicas but I won't be getting this one, it's pretty big and expensive (especially now that it ships from the US, I'm in Europe) and it lacks the nostalgia factor for me due to not having known it in real life. It is however a real piece of retro art, just like the others (and it looks like it's been done even better).
- Suzuran 2y ago
  Depending on whether or not you consider a KS a "real" PDP-10, my KS actually uses less power than my modern PC does under load. The KS sits just under a kilowatt running UETP, but my PC spikes north of 1.2 when running benchmarks. And that's with a now obsolete graphics card in the PC, the newer ones are even more power-hungry.
  - larsbrinkhoff 2y ago
    For that matter is a KL a "real" PDP-10?
Suzuran 2y ago
I feel I should point this out because it seems to be a point of confusion: "PDP" is not a single unified product line. The numbers do not indicate linear progress. There is no architectural relationship between a PDP-8, a PDP-10, and a PDP-11. "PDP" is just the TLA for "Programmed Data Processor", the term DEC used instead of "Computer" to avoid the business/political connotations that the word "computer" had at the time.
- technofiend 2y ago
  Allegedly the term was used so DEC equipment was classified as lab equipment and went through a different procurement process so it didn't end up in the typical computer center glassed off by IT gatekeepers and bureaucracy.

61 points by zdw 2y ago

rst 2y ago

Correction -- it's a 2:3 scale model of a PDP-10 front panel, concealing a Raspberry Pi running an emulator. In the original equipment, the panel would have been attached to one of several racks containing the CPU and main memory, cabled up to peripherals (tape drives like in '60s movies, disk drives the size of washing machines) through wires under the false floor of a dedicated computer room... The PiDP-10 accurately models the console, but it doesn't depict the rest of this at all.

dws 2y ago
Full authenticity would also require raised flooring, and an audio track of people shouting "SAVE YOUR FILES!" whenever the lights flickered.
- gumby 2y ago
  The KA-10 had core memory (except for the instruction counter and locations 0-15 which were general purpose registers which were implemented in DTL). So when the power went out you could just restart, except for the running process. Bad news if that was the monitor of course.
  - tzs 2y ago
    An interesting thing about the KA-10 is that those DTL registers were optional. Architecturally the registers are simply the first 16 words of core memory. If you bought the fast register option with your KA-10 they installed the DTL registers which overlaid the first 16 words of core. A consequence of that was that anything that took a memory address could access the registers as memory. Just give it an address in [0,15]. That included the program counter. Load code in 0-15 and jump to it and it would run quite a bit faster than if it were in core if your KA-10 had the fast register option.

Pet_Ant 2y ago

How long till someone ports NetBSD to it now that it’s more viable? There was work in the past: http://www.jp.netbsd.org/ports/pdp10/ http://www.jp.netbsd.org/ports/pdp10/

rnewme 2y ago
Sadly it's just RPI inside
- Pet_Ant 2y ago
  Does that matter? As long as system level instructions are emulated. I’m sure you could also whip up an FPGA if you wanted to. http://pdp10.froghouse.org/ http://pdp10.froghouse.org/ http://www.fpgaretrocomputing.org/pdp10x/ http://www.fpgaretrocomputing.org/pdp10x/ https://github.com/KS10FPGA/KS10FPGA https://github.com/KS10FPGA/KS10FPGA I haven’t checked, but I’m fairly certain it’s too big for Tiny Tapeout, so ASIC is out of the question unless you want to crowd source an older geometry.
  - Taniwha 2y ago
    TT supports multi block projects now, might be doable
- boznz 2y ago
  It could be almost any $0.50 microprocessor from 2024 and still have more vastly horsepower than any PDP8 ever had.
  - shrubble 2y ago
    The PDP10 was a 36-bit CPU with up to a few MIPS of compute power, however.
- larsbrinkhoff 2y ago
  If you're going to make flip chips, let me know.

anamax 2y ago

There seems to be at least one commercially available PDP-10 clone - https://xkl.com/about/ https://xkl.com/about/

gumby 2y ago
That page does tell you Len Bosack founded XKL but IIRC (that was long ago!) it was Cisco’s original plan to make a PDP-10 clone, and they sold SUNET routers to fund the work. It was a rather successful pivot to make the routers the main business. Another company that used that same hardware to get going was Sun Microsystems, though their initial plan didn’t change.

garciasn 2y ago

I have the PiPDP11 and I had a ball putting it together. I love watching it blink at me all day; it’s soothing and it was gratifying to do. I plan on getting the 8 and 10 someday and putting those together too. Such a great kit. Highly recommended.

boznz 2y ago

DEC Number #2 in computing during the 80's, bought by Compaq, bought by HP and now almost unknown. How the mighty fall.

nobody9999 2y ago
>DEC Number #2 in computing during the 80's, bought by Compaq, bought by HP and now almost unknown. How the mighty fall. Ken Olsen had a flair for being a bit over the top -- which makes the following quite amusing given how things worked out: One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our support for UNIX? Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there. -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984 Source: https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/toc_id/1-0-2/s/77 https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/to...
- vasco 2y ago
  Does anyone know what the name of this old VMS documentation is? I'd like to have a search for it so I could see if I can find a copy. Specially if it's 5 feet of old technical docs, I collect this type of thing.
  - nobody9999 2y ago

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Curious Marc did a video on this recently. Did I see it on HN? https://youtu.be/E0Pp63gsdZI https://youtu.be/E0Pp63gsdZI

hggh 2y ago
> Did I see it on HN? Probably, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40633068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40633068

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Recent discussion just last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40622671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40622671

ChuckMcM 2y ago

I've got one of these and its glorious if you fondly remember the PDP-10 as I do. Yes, its just being emulated on a Raspberry Pi, but seriously running a "real" one generates several kW of heat and required even more kW of power. Not to mention space. I do have a couple of "real" PDP-8s (an 8/e, 8/f, 8/m and most of an 8/a) but I rarely run them because they take a lot of power and they are noisy. I've got a PiDP-11/70 which is running RSX-11M and Pi-hole and DHCP and logs the iOT temperature widgets I built. So it looks good, and does helpful things. Not to mention you can SSH to it and get your RSX-11M console right there :-). So while you don't get the visceral response of a "real" one, 90% of the time you were never in the same room as one in the first place, it ran in the machine room and you were in a room next door typing on a VT100 (or VT-52 ewwww!)

wkat4242 2y ago
> but seriously running a "real" one generates several kW of heat and required even more kW of power. No, both are the same :) It converts the power into exactly the same amount of heat, save for a tiny fraction in light from the bulbs which eventually ends up as heat as well. Totally agree you wouldn't run these at home though. We had a PDP-11 at college and even there they didn't like to switch it on. Never saw a PDP-10 though. I have the PiDP-8 and -11 replicas but I won't be getting this one, it's pretty big and expensive (especially now that it ships from the US, I'm in Europe) and it lacks the nostalgia factor for me due to not having known it in real life. It is however a real piece of retro art, just like the others (and it looks like it's been done even better).
Suzuran 2y ago
Depending on whether or not you consider a KS a "real" PDP-10, my KS actually uses less power than my modern PC does under load. The KS sits just under a kilowatt running UETP, but my PC spikes north of 1.2 when running benchmarks. And that's with a now obsolete graphics card in the PC, the newer ones are even more power-hungry.
- larsbrinkhoff 2y ago
  For that matter is a KL a "real" PDP-10?

Suzuran 2y ago

I feel I should point this out because it seems to be a point of confusion: "PDP" is not a single unified product line. The numbers do not indicate linear progress. There is no architectural relationship between a PDP-8, a PDP-10, and a PDP-11. "PDP" is just the TLA for "Programmed Data Processor", the term DEC used instead of "Computer" to avoid the business/political connotations that the word "computer" had at the time.

technofiend 2y ago
Allegedly the term was used so DEC equipment was classified as lab equipment and went through a different procurement process so it didn't end up in the typical computer center glassed off by IT gatekeepers and bureaucracy.