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Author Topic: PDP-8 for Raspberry Pi  (Read 1455 times)

Offline ChrisSmolinski

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PDP-8 for Raspberry Pi
« on: February 27, 2018, 1240 UTC »
I bet Fansome could get an SDR running on this... look at all the buttons and lights!

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/my-raspberry-pi-thinks-its-a-pdp-8



Chris Smolinski
Westminster, MD
eQSLs appreciated! csmolinski@blackcatsystems.com
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Offline Josh

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Re: PDP-8 for Raspberry Pi
« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2018, 1617 UTC »
That being said, Al might be vaxinated and thus immune to the pdps charms.
We do not encourage any radio operations contrary to regulations.

Offline WA4FHY

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Re: PDP-8 for Raspberry Pi
« Reply #2 on: February 28, 2018, 0426 UTC »
What a blast from the past! The first system we built was an aircraft fatigue test system
using an original "Straight 8" with 4k of magnetic core memory (yes, boys and girls 4,096
bytes of core memory, period - no RAM, no ROM). The programmers wrote the machine
code by hand and then it was toggled in via the switch register.

The days of my mis-spent youth are coming back to haunt me. 8)
SDR-IQ / IC-R70 / IC-735 / FT-817ND / FT-991A, RSPduo,5 band vertical
Near Music City, TN

Fansome

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Re: PDP-8 for Raspberry Pi
« Reply #3 on: March 01, 2018, 0150 UTC »
I used one of these in high school, calculating asteroid orbits. Does anyone remember  the "FoCal" language, sort of a combination of Fortran and Basic?

Later, in college, I worked one summer with an Intersil system that emulated the PDP-8, which was, I believe, the first microprocessor system. This was going to be used to control the seismic stations in Southern California, so that they could store quake data on site for later retrieval and analysis, rather than sending it in real-time via phone lines, which is problematic during an actual quake.

Knobs, buttons, blinking lights, paper tape; those were REAL computers back then.

Offline Pigmeat

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Re: PDP-8 for Raspberry Pi
« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2018, 0926 UTC »
Don't forget punch cards.