Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Bringing Back the PDP8

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the arise-from-your-grave dept.

Anne Thwacks writes " Andrew Grillet has decided that the Digial PDP8 - the first ever minicomputer, will rise from the dead. He is calling it the PDQ8. Sure others have done software emulations, and even hardware clones, but he is not just building a hardware clone, but trying to revive the whole idea of 12 bit computers!"

6 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. TRS80 by ClamClit · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...and I building a 3.5 GHz TRS80 with a GIG of RAM and 2 5 1/4" 80 GB floppys. its the cats ass

  2. 12 bit is best for the US patriot by MosesJones · · Score: 5, Funny

    12 bit is much better for patriotic Americans.

    Think on it, power of two is a far to simplistic and dare I say it European system for the patriotic American. In Europe they use metres, kilometers, grams and kilgrams. All this regulation of structure around a number like 10 is typical of Europeans. Americans use sensible systems like 14 pounds (abbreviated sensibly to lbs as pounds clearly contains the letter l) to a Stone and 16 Ounces (again with a sensible abbreviation of oz) to a pound. Who needs these ridiculous regimented European systems that dicate that everything must follow a sensible pattern?

    Patriotic Americans arise. 12 bits to a byte, 7 bytes to a word, 13 words to a sentence and 1764 bits to a chain.

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  3. Re:Why? by Kibo · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can't be sure about Studebakers but in the case of classic Ferraris and Porsche's I'm fairly certain the idea is still to get laid.

    --
    --Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
  4. Re:what for by rainwalker · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now, I'm no expert on legacy computers, but a machine with 32KW of core sounds dangerous...suddenly my 80W Athlon looks puny!

  5. Re:what for by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Funny
    while the geek factor may be high, what sort of 12-bit software is it going to run ? linux?

    In the bottom of a box somewhere in my basement, I've still got the BASIC source code for the Star Trek game we used to run on our high school's PDP-8. For each player's turn, it printed out the map of the current galactic sector along with any Klingon ships on the line printer.

    It's funny, I remember when we played that game we felt like we had godlike control over a mysterious and powerful machine. Now when I play computer games, I mostly feel like a twitching moron.

  6. Six copies of Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What else would be a 12-bit OS?