Relive the days long gone with the PiDP-11/70

[tommiie]

I came across this on LinkedIn and thought it was rather cool. You might like it as well. Or not. I will certainly order one and perhaps also try to buy some VT-220 terminal on eBay to attach it to this puppy: a PDP-11/70 remake using a Raspberry Pi. From the website:

The PiDP-11 is a modern replica of the PDP-11/70.

Introduced in 1975, the 11/70 was top of the line in the famed PDP-11 range, and the very last system with a proper front panel. Tragically, DEC field service often removed the front panel in a later upgrade, leaving us staring at dull blank panels ever since... The PiDP-11 wants to bring back the experience of PDP-11 Blinkenlights, with its pretty 1970s Rose & Magenta color scheme. On a more modest (living room compatible) scale 6:10, with faithfully reproduced case and switches.

[...]inside is simply a Pi running the excellent simh emulator in the BlinkenBone variety.
It will happily run any other Pi applications concurrently with the PDP-11, so you are not necessarily constrained to just PDP-11 software. Although really, there's not much of interest that does not run on an 11.

 

[SirDice]

You can run emulators/simh on your FreeBSD without problems. The biggest problem is getting your hands on the old tape images to actually install something. Some time ago I actually did find something, I'll see if I can dig that up.

Edit: Found it! http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_v7_on_SIMH

 

[SirDice]

Oh, ah, Blinkenlights, that reminds me. Run telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl, sit back and grab some popcorn

 

[Crivens]

And there is This gem. Not a pdp, but still plenty cool.

 

[ralphbsz]

My former manager (when I worked at IBM) got himself one of the newer Raspberry Pi (the one with the 4-core CPU), installed the Hercules simulator, configured it to emulate an IBM 3084. The 3084 is one of the physically largest mainframes of the last generation, and it had 4 CPUs, which is why running an emulator on a 4-core Pi makes sense. He then installed VM or MVS on it (using some publicly available version), and ran a mainframe that is usually so large that it takes multiple trucks to move in his backpack using a small battery. And the RPi is actually even faster than the giant monster, except when it comes to doing IO.

In the meantime, my other former manager has a PDP-15 in his garage (and it usually functions, although sometimes he has to spend a weekend with an oscilloscope to get it to run again), and supervises the restoration and operation of an IBM 1401, which is now 60 years old, and still works.

Which goes to prove that I worked with insane people, but that's good: I fit in better like that!

 

[tingo]

That reminds me: I should really assemble my PiDP-8 one of these days...