| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 4717.1 | Just when you couldn't stand the excitement! | SCASS1::WISNIEWSKI | ADEPT of the Virtual Space. | Fri Jul 12 1996 00:14 | 10 |
| Wow! Just talked with my contact in St Louis.. Seems another
consultant up there had a PDP8i! and wants to give it a good home!
Gee... We're going to get 5 PDP8s instead of 4!
Doesn't life just keep getting better and better!
See you back on the net when we get back.. Watch this spot;-)
John W.
|
| 4717.2 | | DRDAN::KALIKOW | Imagine Earth w/out AltaVista! :-( | Fri Jul 12 1996 00:29 | 8 |
| Gotta LOVE it. Sheesh, I remember hacking on an 8/e at BBN in 1970ish,
and later an 8/i. We had 'em hooked into a filter bank via a bunch of
custom A/D converters, so that we could do real-time formant analysis
of speech. This was 'WAY before there was compute power enuf to do
FFTs in a box costing anything under ~$200K... Man, to get a gaggle of
these creakers onto a Website would be a trip-and-a-half. Every
nostalgic old fart with slide-rule-marks on his trou would click in.
|
| 4717.3 | I'll see your PDP8 and raise you a gramophone | BBRDGE::LOVELL | � l'eau; c'est l'heure | Fri Jul 12 1996 04:53 | 11 |
| Hey John, love your enthusiasm. Sure as hell don't want to rain on
your parade but what about the minor issue that the PDP8 per se won't be
running a single recognized Internet protocol? The DECserver/TELNET
helps you over the hump. If you guys get away with that, then I could
equally well just interface my old 1950's HMV gramophone into the
audio port of my Starion and serve up Sinatra as Internet RealAudio.
Anyway - go for it - I won't blow the whistle - enjoy your margaritas -
you earned them.
/Chris.
|
| 4717.4 | | VANGA::KERRELL | salva res est | Fri Jul 12 1996 05:19 | 12 |
| re.0:
> Imagine what we can do with
> our more modern systems;-) Marketing.. Marketing??? Wherefore
> art thou marketing?
I work in Marketing and there's no shortage of imagination here. However in
the current climate getting an idea funded, however good, is very
difficult. If you know someone who could make a difference then let me have
their name!
Dave.
|
| 4717.5 | | TROOA::BROOKS | | Fri Jul 12 1996 13:29 | 3 |
| Go get 'em!
Keep us posted...
|
| 4717.6 | | CGOOA::BARNABE | Guy Barnabe - Digital Canada | Fri Jul 12 1996 13:59 | 6 |
| Say, maybe u can cluster the 8's together before putting them on the
net!
-- haha,
Guy
|
| 4717.7 | these boots were made for... | BOOKIE::chayna.zko.dec.com::xanadu::eppes | Nina Eppes | Fri Jul 12 1996 14:37 | 6 |
| > (I can see the web-page now, Orange walls, Girl in
> black Go-Go Boots
Hmm, I thought go-go boots were always white. Mine were... :-)
-- Nina
|
| 4717.8 | They're Here.... | SCASS1::WISNIEWSKI | ADEPT of the Virtual Space. | Mon Jul 15 1996 04:07 | 11 |
| Just got home, returned the Truck, unloaded the cargo...
We have Four PDP8es and two PDP8i, 1 RX01, 4 DECtapes, two Teletypes,
1 VT52, some SI RLO2 clones, and a very, VERY, extensive set of PDP8
software, documents, books, technical schematics...
Oldest PDP8i cpu module looks to be from 1968, the Newest from 71-72!
More to come, as we build the systems for our own purposes...
JW...
|
| 4717.9 | Don't get no better than this;-) | SCASS1::WISNIEWSKI | ADEPT of the Virtual Space. | Tue Jul 16 1996 01:11 | 8 |
| It's alive!!!!!
Time to PM the machines, copy the Paper Tapes to mylar copy the
DECtapes and code some FORTRAN II!
Later....
John Wisniewski
|
| 4717.10 | "Pass the popcorn over here, kiddies..." | DRDAN::KALIKOW | Imagine Earth w/out AltaVista! :-( | Tue Jul 16 1996 05:37 | 12 |
| By crikey, this here's the best show ever. I can't wait to see how it
comes out. Do the old, moss-covered machines break thru & get to
scream down the InfoBahn? (Well, if not actually SCREAM, do they
proceed at a sedate yet respectable pace??)
Munch, munch...
Junior, go out to the lobby & get us some Goobers(tm), there's a good
kid...
:-)
|
| 4717.11 | PDP8 can scream in a stream..... | NQOS01::nqsrv141.nqo.dec.com::rod.rogers@aci | Rod Rogers | Wed Jul 17 1996 02:19 | 11 |
| In some ways (if you can fit the code in a small space),
the PDP8 will make the PDP11 look like a truck
a slooooow truck
Even a MicroVax 3100 has a bit of work to do to match
a PDP8 doing its thing....
Digital found this out the hard way...a mediated law
suit that was settled over a 5 year period.
|
| 4717.12 | First RISC machine | VERN::CARPENTER | | Wed Jul 17 1996 11:09 | 5 |
|
Wan't the PDP-8 the first RISC machine. It only had 10- 12 instructins?
Vern
|
| 4717.13 | 8's were my PAL! | ATLANT::SCHMIDT | See http://atlant2.zko.dec.com/ | Wed Jul 17 1996 11:58 | 36 |
| Vern:
> Wan't the PDP-8 the first RISC machine. It only had 10- 12 instructins?
It had *8*, hence the name! :-)
(Well, that's what folks would claim, so long as you considered
just the opcode (in the most-significant octa digit of the
instruction) nd ignored the sub-decodes within the IOT and
OPERATE instructions.)
Was it RISC? Well, if RISC means a lean, mean instruction set
and direct decoding (no microcode), then most of the '8s certainly
were RISC.
Was it the first? Nahhhhh. It took those characteristics from a
long line of similar DEC machines starting with the PDP-1. And
they took those same characteristics from Ken's early work on
the various TX-n machines.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Meanwhile, on another sub-thread, yes, those '8s sure could
scream when well-coded. I wrote a version of the classical
GT40 lunar lander game that ran on the '8 as standalone OS/8
program and displayed on a VT55 instead of a VT11.
It included, as a joke, the RSTS/E light pattern and on the one
time I got to run it on an '8 with lights (instead of its usual
lightless 8/A), when you looked at the light pattern, you couldn't
even tell it was running. (All the fancy math and trig had been
pre-computed and buried into a bunch of in-core data tables.)
The program's still around somewhere -- I ought to rescue it
from RX01 floppies before bit rot gets it. :-)
Atlant
|
| 4717.14 | how many PDP-5 users out there? | AIAG::SEGER | This space intentionally left blank | Wed Jul 17 1996 16:59 | 9 |
| re: earlier RISC machines
don't forget the PDP-5, the predecessor of the pdp-8, which had an IDENTICAL
instruction set, though a couple of the micro-ops (I think that's what they
were called) would execute in a DIFFERENET order, making it possible to run the
same binary on both machines and get different results (unless your code was
smart enough to figure out which processor it was executing on).
-mark
|
| 4717.15 | | STOWOA::TDOLAN | Tim,MCS PSMG PCs,508-496-8222 (276)OGO-1/F13 | Wed Jul 17 1996 17:23 | 10 |
| <<< Note 4717.14 by AIAG::SEGER
>>same binary on both machines and get different results (unless your code was
>>smart enough to figure out which processor it was executing on).
Yes, I remember patching some COS300 (pdp8 based) code that did some
tricks with rotating the link back and forth. Something like...
set link, rotate left then rotate right. On approved CPUs it worked
however on non-approved CPUs it didn't. (then the testing code changed
the ondisk bootstrap from a read to a write) tim.,.
|
| 4717.16 | Wot about the `9!! | KERNEL::LOANE | Comfortably numb!! | Thu Jul 18 1996 18:24 | 11 |
| ...reminds me of the 3 PDP9's we managed to bodge into i good,
working system back in the late 80's. 2 weeks after we got this
going, a guy rang up with a technical query on a PDP9; he'd been
round the timing manual twice (now THAT was fun!!) before he
determined he had a memory fault. We gave our considered opinion,
and he went off with scope in hand...some time later he called to
say he'd fixed the memory....he'd rewired the bloody donuts!!
Last seen, he'd been invited to the European Medium Range Weather
Forecasting service to explain how his PDP9 could process Satellite
weather data with similar quality to their Cray!!
|
| 4717.17 | set the wayback machine for the 70's | AIAG::SEGER | This space intentionally left blank | Fri Jul 19 1996 10:12 | 12 |
| all this talk about old systems is making me nostalgic...
back in grad school in the early 70's, all we had to use in the lab were a
PDP-5, PDP-8 and a PDP-9. While you had to toggle in the bootstrap loader for
the 5 & 9 (how many people under 30 even have a clue what I'm talking about?),
the PDP-9 had a HARDWARE BOOTSTRAP LOADER! Talk about state-of-the-art!
We had just got in one of those new 11's (which would have been our FIRST
mulit-register machine) but I was already headed out the door for the real
world and never got to play with it.
-mark.
|
| 4717.18 | | ATLANT::SCHMIDT | See http://atlant2.zko.dec.com/ | Fri Jul 19 1996 10:28 | 7 |
| -mark:
> Talk about state-of-the-art!
And the "switch" switch! Well, at least on the 8/E, /F, and /M!
Atlant
|
| 4717.19 | Ancient stuff | FBEDEV::GLASER | | Fri Jul 19 1996 11:52 | 12 |
| Hmmmmm,
The oldest peice of DEC (not digital) equipment I worked on was a
DECsystem-10 with a KA processor. That was the first machine I used
and it taught me Basic, Fortran, TECO, Algol and even COBOL.
Unfortunately, the next machines I worked on were an IBM 1800 (IBM 1120
on steroids) and an RCA Spectra 45.
Talks about regressive culture shock!
-David
|
| 4717.20 | Slow and steady progress... | SCASS1::WISNIEWSKI | ADEPT of the Virtual Space. | Fri Jul 19 1996 13:58 | 10 |
| This weekend,
Inventory.. Clean, PM... and play adventure.. Thanks for everyone's
encouragement and messages (and offers of older equipment and
spares;-)
I and the DFWLUG folks will be working on this project and will
keep everyone posted;-)
John Wisniewski
|
| 4717.21 | Multimedia | ULYSSE::GUEST | | Fri Oct 18 1996 10:29 | 5 |
| 4717.22 | | HELIX::WELLCOME | Steve Wellcome SHR3-1/C22 Pole A22 | Fri Oct 18 1996 13:08 | 3
|