PDP-11

[lmamakos]

I've had a PiDP-11 for a number of years now, getting one early on as I anxiously await the kits to start shipping! What a blast from the past; I run 2.11BSD UNIX on mine, mostly. I also found a rather nice PDP-11 FORTH that I can also boot into.

This hardware reproduction of the front panel really was quite the journey if you go back to the early mailing list. Getting the switch paddles custom manufactured, color matching the plastics, and adventures in learning injection molding for the white bezel. Not only is this a wonderful reproduction (at two-thirds scale!) of the experience of using a computer like that, but it really is an art piece.

I brought mine into work to demonstrate to those not nearly as "vintage" as me how we booted computers in the old days by entering a bootstrap into memory with the front panel. And who needs some fancy symbolic debugger when you can poke around at will with the lights and swtiches!

The kit is not difficult to assemble; all through-hole parts to solder. Really, the hardest parts are the mechanical aspect - mostly ensuring that all those switches are aligned with each other as you solder them in. There's an alignment guide that comes with the kit just for this purpose.

Sure is nice to have a computer of my own with Blinkenlights as intended.