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Rebuilding the PDP-8 With a Raspberry Pi
braindrainbahrain writes: Hacker Oscarv wanted a PDP-8 mini computer. But buying a real PDP-8 was horribly expensive and out of the question. So Oscarv did the next best thing: he used a Raspberry Pi as the computing engine and interfaced it to a replica PDP-8 front panel, complete with boatloads of fully functional switches and LEDs.
I've long since stopped asking why, and just gotten on with "why not?"
Building a replica of a platform gives you the experience of doing it, the understanding of the process, familiarity with the tools you're using ... and possibly some bragging rights among your fellow nerds.
Why pimp out your CPU case with neon? Why put spinners on your rims? Hell, why have cars anything other than black, which should suffice for anybody? Why play video games? Why watch TV?
None of these accomplishes anything other than filling in time or soothing your own need for something you think is cool.
To you, it's opportunity cost. To someone else, it's "why the hell not?" It's something to do they find amusing.
Compared to half the crap you see on YouTube or anywhere else with humans ... I don't see this as being worse than anything else.
With all the dumb crap humans do every day, there's at least some coolness to this.
And I'm betting you can identify at least 10 things you do every week which you couldn't answer "why" if pressed on the issue.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
He's snarky, but there's a point when 'additions' start to harm the machine rather than to improve it. Neon tubes with their associated high voltage and extremely high cycling rate draw a lot of power for not real benefit and introduce electromagnetic noise into the computer. Spinners on car wheels mess with the rotational and steering dynamics of the vehicle and remove one cue to other drivers as to what the vehicle is doing as they can no longer look at the wheels to see if the car is starting to pull forward or not.
There are tradeoffs between aesthetics and functionality. Sometimes the majority of the population feels that those aesthetics are worthwhile and sometimes they don't. Personally I want the indicators on my computer to actually convey something, so having a huge light behind a large transparent open panel in the side that's on just because the computer is powered on doesn't help me while individual indicators for fans and disks could. On the other hand, if I spent considerable time and skill dremelling-out a logo through the side panel, then perhaps the powerful light might actually add something to the experience.
If someone wants to reimplement some antiquated hardware for their own kicks that's fine. I've got dumb RS-232 terminals on my desks at both work and home, so I am not immune to this either. I don't expect others to find it cool either though, as there aren't that many people that grew up pre-GUI or in the BBS days in this hobby anymore, so I do it for myself, not for anyone else's approval.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.