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

ddavepl about 2 hours ago 13 commentsRead Article on pdp1173.com

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 (13 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

dwedge•14 minutes ago

A PDP-11 serving adverts for an AI-written site in 2026 was not on my bingo card. Imagine being brought back from the dead for that.

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•25 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•41 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•38 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.

roryirvine•15 minutes ago

Sadly, the site does seem AI-flavoured to a rather off-putting extent.

And, as you say, the details are so vague - it's exactly what you might expect if an LLM wrote them based on reading a spec sheet rather than any practical experience.

In particular, connecting that DEQNA to a modern network must have been a huge challenge all in itself and I'd have expected there to be a series of blog posts about just that. Maybe it's legit (and I'd love more detail if it is), but right now the presentation screams "thinly disguised ad".

cube00•26 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=39813625)

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

roryirvine•7 minutes ago

Oh, yeah - this popped up on HN yesterday too and also met with scepticism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49772362

Oh well, so this PDP restoration probably isn't real. Disappointing.

ktm5j•16 minutes ago

I'm a little confused by your comment.. especially considering the fact that you edited it and changed the link from and old comment thread from 2024 to whatever this dead post is from 2012. What does having form mean? Who is Dave?