The PDP-10, a computer from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), played an important role in early computing. It made time-sharing common, and even helped build the early ARPANET, the precursor to modern internet. On this day May 17 1983, DEC announced the cancellation of the PDP-10, marking the end of an era. The PDP-10 legacy lives on in hacker folklore, and the ALT key on your keyboard is a legacy from WAITS, an operating system that ran on the PDP-10. #RetroComputing#DEC#PDP10#OnThisDay
Ahhh, re-wiring the finger macros and enjoying using a VT220 the way it was meant to be used. Running #nethack . (This one is running via the console serial port on a Pi zero. )
Oh great #retrocomputing Tooters, I am in search of technical documentation for the #DEC KZMSA #XMI SCSI controller. It was known as "XZA_SCSI" in VMS and I believe "skz" in OSF/1. Anything helps! Merci!
Adventures in designing an interface to a DEC terminal keyboard:
What does "signals are reversed at the monitor" mean exactly? Are the serial in/out names also reversed? Why are pin numbers listed in reverse on the monitor side? Is only the numbering reversed? On top of that, why is the pin numbering apparently opposite to how everyone making RJ connectors numbers them?
Went to RICM and saw several of their systems. They have a PDP/9 they are restoring, PDP/11, and quite a few working vintage computers and gaming systems. Next time more pictures and take their tour of their warehouse.
A lot of the things were fully functional and you were allowed to use them. Amazing experience.
⌨️📺 The DEC VT100 is a historically significant computer terminal. It was available in Slovenia under the name KOPA d.d. 1000. We obtained our specimen in 2006, and it is in working condition, but it lacked a keyboard. Now we've tracked one down and hope to try it out soon! 💪
🐘 Recently, we welcomed the 🄳🄸🄶🄸🅃🄰🄻 AlphaServer 8400 5/440 into our collection. According to online information, it was considered a supercomputer in 1996 💪💪
I didn't realize it at the time but the release of the DEC Rainbow 100 was a big deal back then.
This post explains why and sheds some light on this little known PC, such as the seemingly reasonable design decisions and the market forces that doomed the machine.
@foo@NanoRaptor Can verify. http://www.merck.com ran on an #SGI Challenge S from 1995 to 1998. For the first year I updated it by dumping files to tape from the Indy on my desk and then walking the tape down to the server room to untar them via an attached #DEC VT320 serial terminal, because IT didn’t trust the web server to be connected to anything but its own T1 line.
Eventually I came across Tatu Ylönen’s #SSH and convinced IT to let me scp files.
it strikes me as really odd that there wasn't really a "good" unix for the IBM PC compatibles for a long time
there was xenix but you couldn't actually buy it
the PDP-11 is roughly comparable to the original PC, (16-bit, 256k of memory as an option, secondary storage), so the 5150 seems an acceptable target platform
So my old friend @spacehobo wrote an implementation of Hellorld! for the PDP-12, and getting it to run was quite an adventure. How old of a friend? What's Hellorld!? How quite of an adventure was it it? Watch and learn -- you won't regret it.
I may have just succeeded in making Usagi Electric's #Hellorld challenge work for the #pdp12. I'll have to wait to see if I can cajole @tastytronic to try this on actual germanium.
@spacehobo So, I punched your HELLORLD! code you updated according to the actual behavior of the '12 (and now the emulation), and it works! I made some videos that I'm editing down, so stay tuned...!
This program is going to be a great basis for a video about how the PDP-12 draws characters on the scope... in short, characters are 6 dots high by 4 dots wide; there are many patterns of 6x2 dots, and letters are constructed by building each character from left and right halves. You can kind of see this in the way that the H has a gap in the middle of it. When I use the "auto single-step" mode on the '12 and slow it down, you can see the characters being written one half at a time.
@spacehobo thank you so much for writing this code, and giving us something fun to run on the '12 and a new thing to describe about how the machine works!
https://youtu.be/zcP_Dfgvuo8 ← Here is the video I did with @tastytronic explaining the HELLORLD! code, and documenting the entire debugging saga—complete with actual photos of my printouts at the pub, and videos of blinking console lights!