PDP8/e programmers consoles

[Charles Dickman]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 11:27 AM, Doug Ingraham via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 8:02 PM, Charles Dickman via cctalk <
> cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 9:59 PM, allison via cctalk
>> <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>
>> >> Has anyone ever seen a PDP8/i style console for the PDP8/e?

>> I know the 8/I panel won't work with an 8/e. My question was if there
>> was a special seen in the wild that had all the register values like
>> the 8/i did since the panel interface clearly supports it.
>>
>
> This would certainly be possible.  I discussed exactly this possibility a
> few years
> ago with a now departed friend.  We did a cursory search at the time and
> didn't
> turn up anything.  Of course there are lots of smart people out there who
> do a lot
> of clever things and never bother to tell the net.  My bet would be that
> nobody
> has wanted this enough to make their own omnibus front panel when there are
> still real panels and machines readily available.
>
> I guess you can be the first!  Best wishes.

Not sure I want to go there...

If you have ever looked at the DEC part number listing on bitsaver's
you will be amazed at all the specials that were done. And that was
what I was really interested in. Did DEC ever make a fancy panel that
displayed all the registers? The original designer had it in mind
since he displays a selected register at runtime during TS1 and when
the processor is stopped since that is TS1.

> --
> Doug Ingraham
> PDP-8 SN 1175

Charles Dickman
PDP-8/e SN 2630