
PDP 11/70 Emulator (2020) - threeme3
https://skn.noip.me/pdp11/pdp11.html
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cereal_console
A fun project I finished a few months ago was building a PiDP-11 kit:
[https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11](https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11)

The creator did an amazing job on this kit and it looks great in my study!

~~~
em500
Neat. This VAX-11/780 kit is also great:
[https://vxcompany.com/2016/02/13/a-working-
vax-11780-revisit...](https://vxcompany.com/2016/02/13/a-working-
vax-11780-revisited)

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vaxman
Read his site and want to point out for the younglings that even as far back
as 1984, DEC was showing slides at DECUS that projected 1 BIPS performance
from future models. They went into intricate detail explaining how their
multi-stage pipelining and other cooling techniques would scale.

Then Sun Microsystems declared bankruptcy so it could pivot off of 680x0 tech
(that was no match for the VAX) and onto SPARC. (Trump’s companies and many
others used the same technique.) That prompted DEC to begin developing what
would become Alpha whose architecture was reportedly stolen by Intel while
being shopped to them as a potential second source supplier, then
misappropriated into Pentium Pro/II/III/IV models which all but killed the
market for minicomputers from DEC (there was a legal settlement that resulted
in Intel buying DEC’s Hudson chip FAB business unit which also produced the
StrongARM chip which took hold of the nascent smartphone and Chromebook-like
industries, but of course Intel sold it off because Microsoft wasn’t
interested in that BS.) Intel then killed off their own amazing 432-chip (a
potential VAX killer) and formally released the Alpha tech from DEC inside of
Itanium, which sort of flopped around like a dying fish as the whole PC-
monopoly and security nightmare began.

The DEC operating system, carefully evolved by scientists over 30 years, was
first ported to Alpha, then Itanium before DEC itself wound up merged with its
historic competitors that had their own 30 year old proprietary software and
DEC’s system did not survive. They kept their foot on the throat of anyone who
would port it to the Pentium chips long enough to make sure it never took off.
Seeing it come back on rPi (which is a descendant of StrongARM) is so ironic.
Maybe we could get all the crazies out there still working on Plan9 and other
obscure systems to merge Android infrastructure with VAX/VMS and...

~~~
dboreham
There's quite a bit of fantasy in this post. 432 "amazing". Hmm. Perhaps
you're confusing Itanium being related to HP PA which in turn was related to
Apollo risc?

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vaxman
“fantasy”? I lived it and I’m likely at least a decade or more younger than
you if you did too.

Yes, I read a/the hardcover book on 432 and was really impressed. There was a
slow build for that architecture because it was so different than x86.

Itanium is as I said and the downvote, plus raising the competing architecture
that crushed DEC into oblivion once Carly “That Face” Fiorina bought
Compaq/DEC and you guys finally got your paws on it and your insult
(“fantasy”) tells me where you are coming from. I only hope you are retired
(either in Microsoft or on Social Security )

~~~
jecel
The iAPX432 was released in 1981 but by 1984 Intel had already given up on it,
morphing it into the Intel 960. That was a long time before the DEC Alpha came
out. The Alpha had already been killed in practice by the time the Itanium
project actually started: 1998.

~~~
vaxman
I never said Alpha had something to do with 432. (If anything, it had more to
do with the VAX and DG MV/8000.) It's demise (and the 960) had something to do
with Alpha though.

And uhgain...Itanium was the legit successor to Alpha, Pentium Pro/II/III/IV
were the illegit knock-offs that made that horrific turn of events possible.

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acd
Very fun to use the emulator! It’s the first time I got to try UNIX on Pdp11.
Thanks!

Unix history which includes Dec PDP 11.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix)

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ralphc
Maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm not seeing any links to the JavaScript emulator
source code?

~~~
paulnank
Source files can be found at [https://github.com/paulnank/nankervis-
pdp11-js](https://github.com/paulnank/nankervis-pdp11-js)

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Taniwha
pulls out trusty "mov -(pc), -(pc)" to see if it works ....

