PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

[Diane Bruce]

On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 05:59:42PM -0400, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:
> Brings back memories!  My first 6800 cross assembler came to me as 2000
> Fortran source code punch cards. We had an F4R4 compiler on the PDP11 but
> the card reader was on the PDP-8.

Funny how the kids don't realise Fortran was the 'C' language at one time.
Editors, linker, macro preprocessors a lot of it was done in Fortran. ;)

> 
> The only common peripheral was paper tape.  One night, the Chief Engineer
> and I fed the cards into the PDP8 card reader, punched tape, and fed it
> directly into the PDP11 tape reader.  X-on X-off was handled by hitting the
> stop and continue buttons on the PDP8 as the punch was faster than the
> reader.  The buffer was a pile of paper tape in the floor, which we
> carefully prevented from tangling.  Somehow OS/8 managed to not crash with
> the constant start/stop.

heh I can only imagine.

> 
> Nobody was more surprised than we were when the output compiled perfectly on
> the PDP11 and we made our first 6800 program - a ham repeater controller!

Cool!

> 
> The Chief Engineer is still alive - I was at his 95th birthday last year and
> we often have fun talking about the good old days!

Nice!


> 
> cheers,
> 
> Nigel Johnson
> 
> 
> On 29/03/2020 16:59, Diane Bruce via cctalk wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 09:47:51AM +1300, Brendan McNeill via cctech wrote:
> > > Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending more time on our computers, if that were possible.  I have just completed the restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in New Zealand.  You can view the restoration story and find appropriate resources here:  https://pdp-8.nz <https://pdp-8.nz/>
> > > 
> > > While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) a Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me off list.  I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for this wonderful old machine with 4K of memory.
> > I have memories of keying in RIM and BIN. Long long time ago. I also learned
> > how to talk to the OS/8 file system so we could play morse code from a file
> > instead of a paper tape for our University club station. ;)
> > 
> > > --------------//----------------
> > > brendan at mcneill.co.nz
> > > +64 21 881 883
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 73 de VA3DB for those that care ;)
> 
> 
> -- 
> Nigel Johnson
> MSc., MIEEE
> VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
> 
> Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
> 
> 
> You can reach me by voice on Skype:  TILBURY2591
> 
> If time travel ever will be possible, it already is. Ask me again yesterday
> 
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>    Nigel Johnson <nw.johnson at ieee.org>
> 
> Please consider the environment when deciding if you really need to print this message
> 
> 

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