PDP-8 VT8-E - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

20 Jul 2014

At 02:34 PM 7/20/2014, Eric Smith wrote:
...
 On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 5:46 AM, Jerome H. Fine 
<jhfinedp3k at compsys.to> wrote:
  My question was not intended to be limited to the
VT14 AS  SUPPLIED! 
Nor was my answer.

  Rather, could the VT14 have been relatively
easily modified (i.e.   without
 > major changes AND without having to reverse the changes OTHER than
 > to removing them with ONLY a screwdriver or other similar tool within
 > about 30 minutes) to be able to run PDP-8 software. 
The VT8-E was a set of modules that turned a PDP-8 into a terminal.
In one mode, it DMA'd a chunk of memory and displayed the contents. 
Interesting to fire it off when running memory checks, but that's about 
it. It also had a bitmap font generator.

You could run an OS with the VT8-E running, but you couldn't run 
anything like OS/8 with the VT8-E as the console as it ate too much 
memory and wasn't in any way KL8 compatible.

I don't know anyting about a PDP-14, but it it used a VT8-E, it had to 
be an Omnibus machine with Omnibus memory, so it could easily be turned 
into a PDP-8/E with the right CPU card set.
     -Rick