
The Story of PDP-1 (1998) - tosh
https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/digital/timeline/pdp-1story.htm
======
sgt
It's also a bit of a tragic story. The PDP-1 was designed by Ben Gurley, an
engineer at DEC. He took just 3.5 months to build the machine. Tragically,
Gurley was later murdered in 1963 while eating dinner with his family, when a
co-worker fired a rifle through the window of his house. The co-worker was
later admitted to a hospital of the criminally insane, where he died.

~~~
gist
Wow. Here is a story about that story:

[https://www.informationweek.com/desktop/updikes-passing-
reca...](https://www.informationweek.com/desktop/updikes-passing-recalls-
brush-with-murdered-computer-designer/d/d-id/1076620)

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masswerk
Maybe interesting: A log of implementing a video game (Computer Space) for the
PDP-1 over a month, a project for RetroChallenge 2016/10:

[https://www.masswerk.at/rc2016/10/](https://www.masswerk.at/rc2016/10/)

(The experience was great and the instruction set is a joy to use. The single
time, I felt somewhat hindered, was due to the limit of just up to 3
characters for any names to be used for assembler variables, notably not the
PDP-1's fault. BTW, the games runs at 60 frames a second.)

~~~
sbuttgereit
I was at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View yesterday and got to
play Spacewar!, the game that inspired Computer Space (amongst other things),
on their restored PDP-1. Stephen Russell and Peter Samson were on hand to chat
about it.

Sounds like something they do at the museum regularly, worth a visit

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tkdc926
Here's another interesting read in a similar vein... "The Soul of a New
Machine", a Pulitzer Prize winning book about the creation of a new computer
at Data General Corporation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine)

~~~
bionsystem
This is an incredible book, largely worth a read or two.

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aussiegreenie
My first Data Processing job (pre-IT) was an operator on DEC PDP-11/45\. Later
we upgraded to a DEC PDP-11/70.

In Australia, we had 10% of the world's Pick systems. I have use Wang OIS,
Data General RDOS, IBM System AS400 and a few others as well.

I threw away an original DEC Flea Circus (Field Service) leather toolkit as
the Australian Computer Museum does not have any more room.

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acidburnNSA
Core memory from this era is elegant and beautiful.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-
core_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory)

~~~
forinti
I once heard a story about how Brazil used to manufacture magnetic-core
memory. When production stopped, lots of people lost their jobs and somehow
this shaped Brazil's computer policy (they basically closed the market to
foreign companies). But I haven't been able to find any proof of this.

~~~
jecel
The reserved market policy was created in 1977 specifically to keep IBM from
launching their minicomputer, which would have preemptively killed off the
effort by the government owned company Cobra (which would only launch their
530 mini in 1980)

The relation with jobs was that the policy had full support from academics who
were upset that foreign companies would hire their engineering students only
for sales, with all design work done in their home countries. I am not aware
of any big stink about factory line workers losing their jobs.

------
gumby
Those were he days: “the computer is available in word lengths of 18, 24, 30,
or 36 bits”. You can do multiplication using an instruction or via subroutine
(why?)

~~~
nils-m-holm
Early PDP-1's had the MUS (MUltiply Step) operation, which had to be applied
repeatedly in order to perform multiplication. Singe-step multipy (MUL) was
first available as an extension, later it became the default.

~~~
masswerk
More on the multiply and divide subroutines at
[https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/inside/insidespacewar-
pt6-g...](https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/inside/insidespacewar-
pt6-gravity.html#excursus) – automating these subroutines in hardware meant
adding a special clock, which would take over control in order to perform the
according steps.

