
PDP-11 Instructional Tape (1977) [video] - bane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kz0i3ANHZY
======
mrbill
The DEC system handbooks, which they gave out for free, were incredibly
thorough and informative. Here's a link to the PDP-11 ones on Bitsavers:

[http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/handbooks/](http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/handbooks/)

It's harder nowdays to get your hands on a LSI-based PDP-11 system than it was
in say, 2000 or so - but simh lets you emulate just about anything you might
want, with less space and power usage.

Here's the student workbook to go along with the video:

[http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/Introductio...](http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/Introduction_to_the_PDP-11_Student_Workbook_Apr77/)

I kick myself every now and then for getting rid of the garage full of PDP and
VAX stuff when I moved from Austin to Houston twelve years ago.

~~~
martyvis
Anyone seen the Digital Networking Product catalogues from the late 80's. With
thin Ethernet and DELNIs and DECSTAs the in thing and lots of solution
drawings using cool graphic icons, it made it all look like Knex. Would love
to see them again.

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gravypod
How many PDPs are out there, still yet to be retired? Is there still hope for
crazy hobbyists to get their hands on one?

~~~
fapjacks
There was one on eBay a couple years ago, "only" $5k. They're definitely out
there! I hope when you _do_ get your crazy hobbyist hands on one that you
document the shit out of every interaction you have with it.

~~~
gravypod
I'm attempting to acquire one now because I'm starting a retro computing club
at my college. I want to get my hands on it so me, and a group of about 12
other college students, can fix it up and keep it running for as long as the
college is alive. Since the college is a state funded college that will likely
be for quite some time.

If I were to ever find a PDP I'd ask the person to donate it to me and I'd
donate it to my club with the stipulation that I'm allowed access to it even
after I graduate. If that didn't work out then, hell, I'd still take the PDP
if it was only for a few years.

My club's constitution has been approved, it's being voted into club-hood (or
whatever) in a few weeks. It's called Ar.C.S. or the Archaeological
Computation Society. This is a play on a A.R.C.S. which stands for Academic
Research Computing Services. This is a department of my university that
manages all of our super computing power. They run our cluster called Kong.

ARCS maintains the super computers, ArCS maintains the not-so-super computers.

So far we have an...

    
    
         1. Compaq III clone (i486, 200MB drive, Debian 1.1, DOA & fixed by me)
         2. Timex Sinclair 1000/ZX80 \w cassette player (untested) 
         3. Commodore 64, NIB (will be donated by my coworker during the semester)
         4. IBM PCjr (will be donated by another coworker when he finds it in his attic)
    

If I got a PDP my goals would be....

    
    
        1. Get it working
        2. Get a VT100, CR11 (punchards), LA36 (dot-matrix), RX01 (8" floppy), and a RL02K (swapable HDD)
        3. Get SVR1 installed on it
        4. Get other CS majors to help me write our own operating system on it (optional)
        5. Bell Labs Day. Suits, thick glasses, etc. Most of my profs are ex-bell so they'd get a kick out of this.
        6. I'm a ham radio operator so allow Radio TeleTYpe  (RTTY) for login.
    

A lot needs to happen before any of that.

------
mynameishere
I love the "basic computer elements" middle school science fair style
construction paper visuals.

~~~
ams6110
Quite adequate I thought. Who needs powerpoint.

~~~
Stratoscope
Especially considering that the person watching the tape probably didn't have
a computer with a color display handy.

To view a PowerPoint, you would need some kind of digital equipment to run it
on.

------
ljosa
I have been hoping to find a PDP-11 for my basement ever since I moved to
Maynard, MA (where DEC's headquarters used to be). Does anyone know if any
being given away in the Boston area?

Have they all been chopped up and sold as replacement parts to military
contractors?

------
kerneldeveloper
I once found a book called "Machine and Assembly Language Programming of the
PDP-11" in our university library. It is very old and was published in the
1980s. It includes some interesting knowledge about two pass assembler,
relocation and two pass linker.

------
uptime
If you liked this, try the IBM 1401 manual set to music:
[https://youtu.be/tUkgJWxCyR0](https://youtu.be/tUkgJWxCyR0)

~~~
unhammer
Oh no, regional restrictions! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCiUtRnG-
bg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCiUtRnG-bg) worked, however.

But where can I find the rest of that PDP-11 soundtrack? For those late night
hAx0ring sessions
[https://ap.mnocdn.no/images/401c1688-08aa-4414-ae46-d0fd12ce...](https://ap.mnocdn.no/images/401c1688-08aa-4414-ae46-d0fd12cef9a7?fit=crop&h=551&q=80&w=980)
=P

------
teh_klev
I can almost swear that sounds like Leslie Nielsen narrating this
instructional film. I wonder if this was one of his early "documentary" gigs?

------
basicplus2
Ah memories! What a great machine!

~~~
DrTung
2nd that! First machine I learned assembler on was a 11/45, still remember
toggling in a bootloader to load RSTS/E from the RK05-disk :-)

~~~
luckydude
3rd that! Only assembly language I ever enjoyed. So uniform, it just made
sense. You could look at it and guess what those instructions were doing and
you'd probably be right.

And the instructions in octal actually made sense as well, they were laid out
such you could follow an octal dump. Well, my TA for that course, Ken Witte,
could. I have memories of him coming over for a beer and reading my octal core
dump and pointing to the string of numbers and saying "right here is where you
went wrong". Smart dude, I never got that good, I could puzzle through the
dumps but it was work; he could read them like assembler.

I believe that only worked because DEC laid out the instructions, the numbers
themselves, in a uniform way. Not positive but I think they used 3 octal
digits and the middle one was like load or store and the leading/trailing ones
modified how/what was being loaded/stored. I'd have to go look it up to be
sure, but there was something like that, might be different than I said it,
but it was laid out in a sensible way in the actual numbers so you could read
them easier.

Really fun machine. I think the only 32 bit machine that came close was
Nationals 32032 but they never seemed to be able to produce a bug free chip.
Too bad, that one was pleasant too.

