PDP-11 Instructional Tape (1977) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kz0i3ANHZY

by bane • 9 years ago

55 20 9 years ago

gravypod3• 9 years ago

How many PDPs are out there, still yet to be retired? Is there still hope for crazy hobbyists to get their hands on one?

duncan_bayne• 9 years ago

They're pretty easy to emulate.

http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_Unix_v6_(PDP-11)_on_SIMH

martyvis2• 9 years ago

I commissioned and programmed pdp11/83 based systems used for process control and operator interface systems in a steelworks as "recently" as 1989. I wouldn't be surprised if they were still running...

hazeii• 9 years ago

I suspect there are quite a few in private ownership (I have several). If you really want one, your best bet may be find someone who wants to 'pass the torch', so to speak.

gravypod3• 9 years ago

Would you happen to have a PDP that's ripe for torch passing?

Couldn't help but ask....

fapjacks• 9 years ago

There was one on eBay a couple years ago, "only" $5k. They're definitely out there! I hope when you do get your crazy hobbyist hands on one that you document the shit out of every interaction you have with it.

gravypod3• 9 years ago

I'm attempting to acquire one now because I'm starting a retro computing club at my college. I want to get my hands on it so me, and a group of about 12 other college students, can fix it up and keep it running for as long as the college is alive. Since the college is a state funded college that will likely be for quite some time.

If I were to ever find a PDP I'd ask the person to donate it to me and I'd donate it to my club with the stipulation that I'm allowed access to it even after I graduate. If that didn't work out then, hell, I'd still take the PDP if it was only for a few years.

My club's constitution has been approved, it's being voted into club-hood (or whatever) in a few weeks. It's called Ar.C.S. or the Archaeological Computation Society. This is a play on a A.R.C.S. which stands for Academic Research Computing Services. This is a department of my university that manages all of our super computing power. They run our cluster called Kong.

ARCS maintains the super computers, ArCS maintains the not-so-super computers.

So far we have an...

     1. Compaq III clone (i486, 200MB drive, Debian 1.1, DOA & fixed by me)
     2. Timex Sinclair 1000/ZX80 \w cassette player (untested) 
     3. Commodore 64, NIB (will be donated by my coworker during the semester)
     4. IBM PCjr (will be donated by another coworker when he finds it in his attic)

If I got a PDP my goals would be....

    1. Get it working
    2. Get a VT100, CR11 (punchards), LA36 (dot-matrix), RX01 (8" floppy), and a RL02K (swapable HDD)
    3. Get SVR1 installed on it
    4. Get other CS majors to help me write our own operating system on it (optional)
    5. Bell Labs Day. Suits, thick glasses, etc. Most of my profs are ex-bell so they'd get a kick out of this.
    6. I'm a ham radio operator so allow Radio TeleTYpe  (RTTY) for login.

A lot needs to happen before any of that.

mynameishere• 9 years ago

I love the "basic computer elements" middle school science fair style construction paper visuals.

ams6110• 9 years ago

Quite adequate I thought. Who needs powerpoint.

Stratoscope• 9 years ago

Especially considering that the person watching the tape probably didn't have a computer with a color display handy.

To view a PowerPoint, you would need some kind of digital equipment to run it on.

kerneldeveloper• 9 years ago

I once found a book called "Machine and Assembly Language Programming of the PDP-11" in our university library. It is very old and was published in the 1980s. It includes some interesting knowledge about two pass assembler, relocation and two pass linker.

mrbill• 9 years ago

The DEC system handbooks, which they gave out for free, were incredibly thorough and informative. Here's a link to the PDP-11 ones on Bitsavers:

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/handbooks/

It's harder nowdays to get your hands on a LSI-based PDP-11 system than it was in say, 2000 or so - but simh lets you emulate just about anything you might want, with less space and power usage.

Here's the student workbook to go along with the video:

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/Introductio...

I kick myself every now and then for getting rid of the garage full of PDP and VAX stuff when I moved from Austin to Houston twelve years ago.

martyvis2• 9 years ago

Anyone seen the Digital Networking Product catalogues from the late 80's. With thin Ethernet and DELNIs and DECSTAs the in thing and lots of solution drawings using cool graphic icons, it made it all look like Knex. Would love to see them again.

basicplus2• 9 years ago

Ah memories! What a great machine!

DrTung• 9 years ago

2nd that! First machine I learned assembler on was a 11/45, still remember toggling in a bootloader to load RSTS/E from the RK05-disk :-)

luckydude• 9 years ago

3rd that! Only assembly language I ever enjoyed. So uniform, it just made sense. You could look at it and guess what those instructions were doing and you'd probably be right.

And the instructions in octal actually made sense as well, they were laid out such you could follow an octal dump. Well, my TA for that course, Ken Witte, could. I have memories of him coming over for a beer and reading my octal core dump and pointing to the string of numbers and saying "right here is where you went wrong". Smart dude, I never got that good, I could puzzle through the dumps but it was work; he could read them like assembler.

I believe that only worked because DEC laid out the instructions, the numbers themselves, in a uniform way. Not positive but I think they used 3 octal digits and the middle one was like load or store and the leading/trailing ones modified how/what was being loaded/stored. I'd have to go look it up to be sure, but there was something like that, might be different than I said it, but it was laid out in a sensible way in the actual numbers so you could read them easier.

Really fun machine. I think the only 32 bit machine that came close was Nationals 32032 but they never seemed to be able to produce a bug free chip. Too bad, that one was pleasant too.

teh_klev• 9 years ago

I can almost swear that sounds like Leslie Nielsen narrating this instructional film. I wonder if this was one of his early "documentary" gigs?

uptime• 9 years ago

If you liked this, try the IBM 1401 manual set to music: https://youtu.be/tUkgJWxCyR0

unhammer• 9 years ago

Oh no, regional restrictions! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCiUtRnG-bg worked, however.

But where can I find the rest of that PDP-11 soundtrack? For those late night hAx0ring sessions https://ap.mnocdn.no/images/401c1688-08aa-4414-ae46-d0fd12ce... =P

ljosa• 9 years ago

I have been hoping to find a PDP-11 for my basement ever since I moved to Maynard, MA (where DEC's headquarters used to be). Does anyone know if any being given away in the Boston area?

Have they all been chopped up and sold as replacement parts to military contractors?

PDP-11 Instructional Tape (1977) [video]

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