PiDP-1, or the rebirth of an old machine

https://hackaday.io/project/202541-replica-of-the-pdp-1-pidp-1/log/239666-finished-the-first-test-batch-of-5-machines

by ozymandiax • 1 year ago

107 32 1 year ago

aap_6• 1 year ago

As one of those guys in the photo I really hope everyone will have a lot of fun with this :)

The photos don't show it but you can also have your PiDP-1 in white instead of blue. It will come with both sets of front panels.

dddw2• 1 year ago

The blue is amazing though!

fragmede2• 1 year ago

This looks fascinating! is there a link that would be a better intro to the project?

prosaic-hacker• 1 year ago

There was this link on the page https://hackaday.io/project/202541-replica-of-the-pdp-1-pidp...

aap_6• 1 year ago

In case you didn't see, the hackaday project page has two more links on the side, but currently information is a bit sparse, sorry. We're currently on a sprint to finish and polish the software distribution.

jesuslop• 1 year ago

Wow, one of these should be at a museum or public institution.

thaliaarchi• 1 year ago

I just built my PiDP-11 and would love to get one of these.

dddw2• 1 year ago

They want it to be an afforable kit. Indeed very nice to get your hands on one

ozymandiax• 1 year ago

Yes, with the PiDP-10 we did a huge injection mold and it nearly killed us. Well, no, but we still have not recovered the investment. And it became an expensive thing, which limits the amount of people who want to play with one.

So with the PiDP-1, we figured out how to make the entire case from FR4 panels. As there are no Iconic Curves in a PDP-1 case. Turns out this is the sturdiest PiDP yet!

We hope to get some interest from the democoder community. Writing games and demos for the PDP-1's Type 30 display is so much more fun than pushing pixels on a C64 :-)

nyrikki• 1 year ago

I have so much fun with my PiDP-11 that this will have to go on the list.

Does anyone know if MIDAS has been recreated for it or not?

A bit of the hint on the PPT reader, which would be awesome, the rp2xxx chips PIO can handle that with ease. As the PDP1 doesn't have take-up it is pretty trivial to make at 'historic' speeds. Obviously punching is much more difficult.

I looked into it for quite a bit, but not having access to tapes, puncher, supplies etc... I gave up on the idea as the PiDP-10 will scratch my personal nostalgia itch a bit more right now.

aap_6• 1 year ago

There are some versions of MIDAS around on bitsavers but I have to admit i haven't really looked into them much yet. Gotta leave something to the community, right? (or so i tell myself...). Another thing is that not all PDP-1s were the same and especially the PDP-1/X at MIT was a super hacked up version. Any code for that will not run my emulation (at least for now).

A real tape reader would be great and is something we are considering for the future, but without a punch it's not very satisfying. There will be a paper tape visualization though (currently writing the code for that).

Telemakhos• 1 year ago

The PiDP-1 and PiDP-10 are both absolutely gorgeous; while I'm glad to have modern keyboard and monitors and processors, I envy the past its style.

drcongo• 1 year ago

I'd never heard of these things, but they really are beautiful.

ForOldHack• 1 year ago

I got into the game when my older brother was sysadmin for a PDP-11. I had the opportunity to look at tall the collected reference work going back to the PDP-1.

All very interesting reads.

qingcharles2• 1 year ago

OK, after reading this site I want to know more about the PDP-1 demoscene.

aap_6• 1 year ago

This is a good start: https://www.masswerk.at/minskytron/

The pdp-1 "demoscene" has been rather inactive for ~6 decades now :) Our hope is to breathe some new life into it.

qingcharles2• 1 year ago

As an "old skool" demo coder, I'm impressed! I'm thinking with the vector display and the fall-off you could probably do some really fun stuff.

Would be interesting to get some modern demo coders onto it to see what was possible.

masswerk2• 1 year ago

As for the current one, a few years ago (2016), I wrote a new game for the PDP-1, a Computer Space simulator for the machine that inspired this first coin-op arcade video game. (Hence, Ironic Computer Space Simulator or short ICSS.) It proves that the venerable PDP-1 is capable of running a video game at 60 fps!

https://www.masswerk.at/icss/

As this was a RetroChallenge project, there's also project blog: https://www.masswerk.at/rc2016/10/

a4isms• 1 year ago

Delighted by the resemblance of the HN title to Tracy Kidder's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Soul of a New Machine."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

matthewfcarlson• 1 year ago

That was probably intentional :)

I love that book

anonymousiam• 1 year ago

I've got a PiDP-11 from the same group. It's a faithful replica, and it brings back memories from 50 years ago.

https://obsolescence.dev

oscar_ceds• 1 year ago

See www.obsolescence.dev for more details

ChicagoDave• 1 year ago

Being an old DEC programmer (RSTS/E BASIC, VAX BASIC and C), this stuff is more than nostalgia. It’s literally the foundation of my technical soul.

nxobject• 1 year ago

Congratulations on getting the vector display working as well! Now we can have the world's most baroque Spacewar! mini arcade machine ever ;)

PiDP-1, or the rebirth of an old machine

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