I picked up this PIDP8 front panel kit advertised as not working correctly. Let's diagnose and fix it and then run some vintage assembly code. You can check out the website at obsolescence.w...
Yet another awesome vid from Arty, every video is just gripping suspense. Great to see you back and really looking forward to the next vid; when you have time. Thankyou for sharing your incredible skills.
Awesome video sir! That was fun!! I worked on a PDP-11 in the Air Force.Brings back memories. The hard disk was a cartridge/fixed type and part of my maintenance duties was to _physically_ wipe the disk surface with a cotton swab and IPA! Wow, times have changed... Thanks again! See you next time.
FWIW, it only takes a few days on most dry surfaces for the corona virus to fall apart... so as long as it’s been in the mail for a few days you should be OK.
Nice to see you again Arty. Congrats on the repair. Having taken college computer science at a time when you loaded and stored your programs via punch cards, I would have no desire to give up GUIs to go back to machine language and manual entry, so can't imagine the appeal of this device.
This is a great kit to get in a non-working state since it is just a bunch of lights and switches, which are easy to troubleshoot and fix. Regarding the bamboo case/box, you can get replacements at Target (they are a standard off-the-shelf stackable storage box), so don't worry about messing it up. There is a fairly active discussion group for the PiDP-8 on Google Groups. The maker of this kit also has a PiDP-11 (with a custom injection molded case) and some other fun stuff.
Just watched this, very interesting. Love these old computers. I think the 'deposit' key should be down to start with and clicked up to enter code to avoid accidental activation.
That's a neat little project to play around with. Going back to thinking in octal is a bit of nostalgia, have to switch my brain into a lower gear :D Cheers, hope you are doing ok.
I addition to this excellent kit, I also bought the Altair 8080 emulator. One thing I really like about the Altair is they designed a really cool plastic case for it. I am hoping someone with cad skills may make something comparable for this PDP. I may take a stab at a plexiglass box with more depth and a rear panel for connectors. Any takers ??
I remember the real PDP8. We had one at the university in 1969. Sure brings back memories (without intending a pun). Thanks for a great video. It's much appreciated. BTW, have you seen the IMSAI 8080 replicas?
Hi, may I ask You sharing the schematics? The provided picture on the webiste is rather small. 720x497 pixels. Thats pretty much unusable. The promissed KiCad files (of 2015) have been locked inside his Google drive. But the man DOES NOT respond when i asked for granting me access. At least he did not not within two weeks I asked the very first time.
After you stopped the first program the instruction counter was set to 3 -- why is that? The program was bouncing between 0 and 1 and the next instruction would be 2. Very suspicious. Is the emulator accessible on the Raspberry. Can you load and store programs, for example? Nice toy and great video!
Not sure about that, but the original PDP8 user manual could probably answer your questions. The emulator is open source running under raspbian and I'm sure can be made to do many, many wonderful things, including a core save/restore.
Yet another awesome vid from Arty, every video is just gripping suspense.
Great to see you back and really looking forward to the next vid; when you have time.
Thankyou for sharing your incredible skills.
You got my thumbs-up 🙂
Just grateful for anything you have time to post on the tube.
Please Sir, left my Utube vid on the bus is always a good excuse.
Thanks for sharing
Assembly Language is NOT dead ! Thanks!
Well done with a simple, if tedious, fix. I envy you your PiDP8. I cut my teeth on a machine of the same era and I'm quite nostalgic about it.
There is a test program for the LED's you can run "pidp8i-test" from the Pi if you connect a monitor and a keyboard
Awesome video sir! That was fun!! I worked on a PDP-11 in the Air Force.Brings back memories. The hard disk was a cartridge/fixed type and part of my maintenance duties was to _physically_ wipe the disk surface with a cotton swab and IPA! Wow, times have changed... Thanks again! See you next time.
Been a while since I did assembly programming, but I follow what you did. A more in depth video on testing/programming this unit would be great.
It's great to see you on again, Arty! I don't know anything about assembly language, but this was still a very interesting video.
Ben Eater and Julian Ilett are doing breadboard computers that are programmed similarly, but with more detailed explanations.
Your always worth the wait Art! Keep them young man
FWIW, it only takes a few days on most dry surfaces for the corona virus to fall apart... so as long as it’s been in the mail for a few days you should be OK.
great vid. The original pdp-8 (classic 8) was a huge box with two flip out backplanes filled with R series modules.
Nice to see you again Arty. Congrats on the repair. Having taken college computer science at a time when you loaded and stored your programs via punch cards, I would have no desire to give up GUIs to go back to machine language and manual entry, so can't imagine the appeal of this device.
It's hard to explain, but I enjoy ancient computing devices immensely.
This is a great kit to get in a non-working state since it is just a bunch of lights and switches, which are easy to troubleshoot and fix. Regarding the bamboo case/box, you can get replacements at Target (they are a standard off-the-shelf stackable storage box), so don't worry about messing it up.
There is a fairly active discussion group for the PiDP-8 on Google Groups. The maker of this kit also has a PiDP-11 (with a custom injection molded case) and some other fun stuff.
And here I thought that the cases were custom made. Bed, Bath and Beyond sells the exact replacement for $7.99. Thanks for the tip.
Just watched this, very interesting. Love these old computers. I think the 'deposit' key should be down to start with and clicked up to enter code to avoid accidental activation.
"did you use a cattle prod to solder this?" Hah!
That's a neat little project to play around with. Going back to thinking in octal is a bit of nostalgia, have to switch my brain into a lower gear :D
Cheers, hope you are doing ok.
There are some neat calculations you can do in base 5 using your fingers.
I addition to this excellent kit, I also bought the Altair 8080 emulator. One thing I really like about the Altair is they designed a really cool plastic case for it. I am hoping someone with cad skills may make something comparable for this PDP. I may take a stab at a plexiglass box with more depth and a rear panel for connectors. Any takers ??
This thing looks like one of the gadgets of Mr Spock on board the Enterprise. At least, it fits the time frame.
It looks like part of Alpha from Space 1999.
Another possibility to damage LED's is to heat them for too long during soldering.
I remember the real PDP8. We had one at the university in 1969. Sure brings back memories (without intending a pun). Thanks for a great video. It's much appreciated. BTW, have you seen the IMSAI 8080 replicas?
I've seen the replicas and have been sorely tempted.
@@artifactelectronics Yep, me too. But unless I find $500 on the sidewalk while walking down the street, it's real unlikely. :-)
Hi,
may I ask You sharing the schematics?
The provided picture on the webiste is rather small.
720x497 pixels.
Thats pretty much unusable.
The promissed KiCad files (of 2015) have been locked inside his Google drive.
But the man DOES NOT respond when i asked for granting me access.
At least he did not not within two weeks I asked the very first time.
After you stopped the first program the instruction counter was set to 3 -- why is that? The program was bouncing between 0 and 1 and the next instruction would be 2. Very suspicious. Is the emulator accessible on the Raspberry. Can you load and store programs, for example? Nice toy and great video!
Not sure about that, but the original PDP8 user manual could probably answer your questions.
The emulator is open source running under raspbian and I'm sure can be made to do many, many wonderful things, including a core save/restore.
Call Frontier support - "My e-mail is down!" - Frontier support responds "We sent you an e-mail with some steps to try"...