Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff

So a friend handed me PIDP 8 and PIDP 11 kits to build for him today.

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tocsa120ls:
Snagged one of the June 5th batch. I have to say this kit is pretty comprehensive.

My only complaint would be that using a threaded nut as a spacer is a bad idea. I had to pull the board once, and of course that nut got caught and I turned 2 out of 5 hex spacers back out of the fascia.

The other one is the software, specifically the Blinkenbone library they built for it. I have a few Orange Pi's lying around (w. Armbian) and thought about using one to drive the PiDP. Forget it. After 4 hours of trying and recompiling the Blinkenbone software multiple times it would still timeout on the OPi's GPIO. In the end I needed some air anyway so I went and picked up a RasPi.

None of these are real problems - the nut is really a 'meh' problem if you have some threadlocker, and it is stated in the description that it only works on Raspbian with a Raspberry Pi.

I ordered a bunch of panel-mount cables to patch the Pi's connectors out to the backplate. Also mounted two extra IC sockets for the MAX232 expansion. I plan on using an USB-to-serial converter like a FT232RL... trouble is they have 4 knockouts for serial and 4 for USB... so I probably will design a small panel that has a hub like a USB2504 or a TUSB2046 and the FTDI chip on it.
(Or I could invoke my inner Woz and look for a chip that has at least 2 functions built in, instead of using 3 chips in line)

IanB:
I've seen a video of someone assembling one of these PiDP-11's.

However, when I worked with real PDP-11 computers they had serial ports you could plug terminals like VT100's into and they ran operating systems like RSX-11 or RT-11.

If you can't do something similar with a PiDP-11 I'm not sure it would hold the interest for very long. In the video I watched someone was playing around entering a blinking light program through the switches on the front panel, which gave many viewers the impression this was how those computers were actually programmed!

tocsa120ls:
It has both RSX-11 and RT-11 (and SysV and others too) but to connect up a real terminal you have to add hardware.
I plan to do it so everything fits in the box and it will be level correct RS232 but if you have an usb-serial converter just try plugging it up, it should work. Also if you log in to the RasPi with ssh you can use screen -x to connect to the emulator like this and you can use it.
Default screen is the smaller one, RSX11 is the longer.

chris_leyson:
Got to play with a PDP8 40 years ago. You would key in a few instructions using the operators monitor panel to probably jump to a boot loader and then load the program from punched tape.

Kjelt:

--- Quote from: Housedad on May 10, 2019, 10:37:19 pm ---It sure was a long time ago.  The PDP8 was high school 1973 through 1976.

--- End quote ---
Ah I envy you. In our highschool begin 80's there were still no computers at all  :(

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