A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix

ddavepl about 2 hours ago 8 commentsRead Article on pdp1173.com

DE version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

The box is a restored Q-bus PDP-11/83 named minerva: Mentec M11 CPU, two chassis tied with M9404/M9405, RQDX3, 2xEmulex UC07, KDA50, RLV12, DEQNA, M3104. Storage is RA82 + dual RA92, MFM boot/swap, dual RL02, RX50s, and a TKZ50. OS is 2.11BSD.

The live panel is top. /cgi-bin/webtop is the raw snapshot.

A 16-bit httpd will not survive the front page, so Varnish/Caddy/Cloudflare cache the HTML and a 5-second webtop sample. Origin is still the 11 itself, and it handles all of the webtop and visitor count requests.

Telnet exists (pdp1173.com, guest) but it is a 40-year-old UNIX with no modern security story. Please do not treat it as a challenge box; I can restore from tape, but that ruins it for everyone else.

Happy to answer Mentec, MSCP, Q-bus, or 2.11BSD questions.

To get BSD running on the Mentec, I had to customize the BSD kernel to use FPSIM, as the Mentec supports IEEE floating-point and NOT the DEC formats.

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Discussion (8 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

kjs3•about 1 hour ago

Please do not treat it as a challenge box; I can restore from tape, but that ruins it for everyone else.

Unfortunately, for a disturbing percentage of the Internet, ruining things for everyone else is the goal. I'd turn off telnet.

mikerg87•22 minutes ago

I posted this to twostopbits. Community over there is small but devoted to such willful acts of restoration

https://twostopbits.com/item?id=9970

jmbwell•37 minutes ago

I love it. My PDP-11 has some fault that keeps it blowing fuses. Emulators don’t feel the same. Real hardware doing the work, well done

frumplestlatz•about 1 hour ago

Thanks for keeping the spirit of the old internet alive :)

I hope you won’t have to restore it from tape!

budman1•about 1 hour ago

as of 12 noon CST, it pings but does not telnet.

mlmonkey•about 1 hour ago

Why is the domain `pdp1173.com` when the machine is a PDP 11/83 ?

ktm5j•35 minutes ago

There's a couple eyebrow raising things about this post.. like the fact that there's nothing but vague details in text and one photo with an AI prompt like alt-text. I think they're just trying to get clicks for that banner ad.

cube00•23 minutes ago

While probably it's legit because I've seen Dave discussing the process on the YT channel (which I no longer watch) he unfortunately does have form https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3981362)

Having TMOG on a .org when it sells commercial licences doesn't sit well with me given the history.