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Discussion (5 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

Animats•about 17 hours ago
There's also a working PDP-10 console replica you can buy.[1]

There was a really nice IBM 1401 data center simulator written in Unreal Engine at [1]. You could mount tapes, punch cards, push buttons, and actually operate the machine. But the site is gone. There's some archived material.[2] But even his Youtube videos are now "Private". Here's someone else running his simulator.[3]

I hope the simulator hasn't been lost.

[1] https://obsolescence.dev/pdp10.html

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20250605101441/https://rolffson....

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE4jiV99ECU

kjs3•about 15 hours ago
There are also semiconductor reimplementations of some of these classic minicomputers if you was the real thing in a smaller package.

The Harris/Intersil 6100/6120 processor line was basically a highly integrated PDP-8 on a chip. You could get a really cool 6120 kit for a while[1], tho now you'd roll your own, since the kit is no longer being sold.

The TI9900 of crappy microcomputer fame is a implementation of the TI990 minicomputer. There are a couple of example SBCs projects running around.

Data General had the microNOVA version of the DG NOVA. Separately, Fairchild had the F9440. There were dev boards for both, but no open source projects I know of. Software has been an issue for the NOVA.

The WE32000 (not NS32000) was a VLSI implementation of the AT&T 3B5/3B20 minicomputers. There was a dev board, but you'd mostly find one in a 3b2.

And, of course, there were VLSI version of the DEC VAX-11 (e.g. CVAX, NVAX) and PDP-11 (Harris J-11, DEC T-11, several ASIC versions). Found lots of places.

[1] https://github.com/SpareTimeGizmos/SBC6120

kjs3•about 15 hours ago
Oh, yeah...and the Signetics 2650 (used in some OG video games) was heavily cribbed from the IBM 1130.
glimshe•about 16 hours ago
Very cool! What are the most interesting things I could do with these? I know there are a few old games but what else worth pursuing? Payroll simulator? :)
kjs3•about 15 hours ago
I'll be honest...I never really 'got' the PDP-8. It's a great example of what really, really smart folks can come up with when you have a very limited transistor budget. The ISA is limited and quirky (aka 'strange'), there's not much memory and it's relatively slow, but a huge amount of serious work got done.

OS/8 and TSS/8 are the 'common' OS. ASM, FOCAL, FORTRAN & BASIC were popular programming languages. You can find images lots of places. I don't guess there's a lot of 'canned' software, as the PDP-8s were more targeted at roll-you-own software. I personally think the most interesting things about them was the many places they were used as controllers for other things, like manufacturing machines and laboratory kit. Not very amenable to a home lab, but they have a very dedicated following in the classic computer world.