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Rebuilding the PDP-11/70 with a Raspberry Pi (wixsite.com)
"You could look at this as a smallish PDP-11/70, built with modern parts," Oscar Vermeulen writes on his site. "Or alternatively, and equally valid, as a fancy front panel case for a Raspberry Pi."
Long-time Slashdot reader cptnapalm writes: Oscar Vermeulen's PiDP-11 front panel, modeling a PDP-11/70 in all its colorful glory, has been released to beta testers. This is Mr. Vermeulen's second DEC front panel; his PiDP-8 was released a few years ago. The PiDP-11 panel is designed to work with a Raspberry Pi running simh or, possibly, a FPGA implementation of the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11... In addition to the front panel with its switches and blinkenlights, also included is a prototyping area for the possibility of adding new hardware...
UNIX and later BSD were developed on the PDP-11, including both the creation of the C language, the pipe concept and the text editor vi.
Long-time Slashdot reader cptnapalm writes: Oscar Vermeulen's PiDP-11 front panel, modeling a PDP-11/70 in all its colorful glory, has been released to beta testers. This is Mr. Vermeulen's second DEC front panel; his PiDP-8 was released a few years ago. The PiDP-11 panel is designed to work with a Raspberry Pi running simh or, possibly, a FPGA implementation of the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11... In addition to the front panel with its switches and blinkenlights, also included is a prototyping area for the possibility of adding new hardware...
UNIX and later BSD were developed on the PDP-11, including both the creation of the C language, the pipe concept and the text editor vi.
Before the Pi, you'd see all sorts of devices hacked to get new firmwares and new capabilities into them, that the original creator hadn't even dreamed of. Remember the Chumby? Hacking various routers?
The Pi platform lets you skip that sometimes difficult hacking phase, and onto the, "What could I do with this hardware?!"
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
The highlight of my Digital Electronics II Lab course in college was to design and prototype a PDP5 using 74xx series logic chips on breadboards. In comparison, the PDP 11/70 was an advanced supercomputer, but the task of designing even the simplest computer at the gate level really created an appreciation for the complexity of processors. It took 20 breadboards to prototype and worked for just a few minutes before a chip lost its smoke somewhere. Fun days!