[Coco] Remaking the PDP 8/I with Raspberty Pi

[Duane Adrian]

[Oscar] really likes the PDP-8s, with the extremely old school PDP-8/I
being his favorite. If you haven't checked the price on these recently,
getting a real PDP-8/I is nigh impossible. However, after assembling a
KIM-1 clone kit, an idea struck: what about building a modern PDP-8/I
replica that *looks* like the real thing, but is powered by modern
hardware. This would be fairly cheap to build, and has the added bonus of
not weighing several hundred pounds.

The PiDP-8 is [Oscar]'s project <http://hackaday.io/project/4434-pidp-8i>
to replicate the hardware of the 8/I in a modern format. Instead of
hundreds of Flip Chips, this PDP-8 is powered by a Raspberry Pi running the
SIMH emulator <http://simh.trailing-edge.com/>. The 40-pin GPIO connector
on the Pi is broken out to 92 LEDs and 26 toggle switches on a large PCB.
This setup gets [Oscar] a reasonable facsimile of the PDP-8/I, but he's
also going for *looks *too. He created an acrylic panel
<http://hackaday.io/project/4434-pidp-8i/log/14646-acrylic-panel-sent-off>
with artwork copied from an original 8/I  that mounts to the PCB and gives
the entire project that beautiful late 60s / early 70s brown with harvest
gold accent color scheme.

Since this emulated PDP-8/I is running on entirely new hardware, it doesn't
make much sense to haul out disk drives as big as a small child, tape
drives, and paper tape readers. Instead, [Oscar] is putting everything on USB
sticks
<http://hackaday.io/project/4434-pidp-8i/log/15453-polishing-up-the-software>.
It's a great solution to the problem of moving around files that are *a few
kilowords* in size.

[image: vt100normal][Oscar] says he'll be bringing his PiDP to the Vintage
Computer Festival East X <http://www.vintage.org/2015/east/> in Wall, NJ, April
17-19. We'll be there, and I've already offered [Oscar] the use of a VT-100
terminal. If you're in the area, *you should come to this event*. It's
guaranteed to be an awesome event and you're sure to have a great time.
Since this is the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the PDP-8, there
will be a half-dozen original PDP-8s set up, including a newly refurbished
Straight-8 that came out of the RESISTORS
<http://makerspace.rutgers.edu/content/tribute-resistors>.
 *Brian Benchoff <http://hackaday.com/author/brianbenchoff/>* | March 26,
2015 at 4:00 am | Tags: hackaday.io <http://hackaday.com/?tag=hackaday-io>,
pdp <http://hackaday.com/?tag=pdp>, PDP-8 <http://hackaday.com/?tag=pdp-8>,
PDP-8/I <http://hackaday.com/?tag=pdp-8i>, raspberry pi
<http://hackaday.com/?tag=raspberry-pi>, VCF <http://hackaday.com/?tag=vcf>,
VCF East <http://hackaday.com/?tag=vcf-east> | Categories: Hackaday Columns
<http://hackaday.com/?cat=190105353>, Raspberry Pi
<http://hackaday.com/?cat=69218551> | URL: http://wp.me/pk3lN-Det