Hey retroheads, I'm looking at getting a replica of one or more computers from the 1970s.
I'm specifically looking at replicas of the PDP-8, the PDP-11, and the Altair 8800.
Which of the above (if any) would you kit build? Which others should I consider?
@ajroach42 Not from that era, but I'd love to see an emulated lisp machine. The real things are expensive unicorns even now, with power draw to match.
Being lisp all the way down though, I can't see them being much of an emulation target. The closest (and very accessible) version today is Emacs, SBCL or CCL, and SLIME.
maybe an its tops machine? I'm not sure I'm remembering the name right. it had a command to crash the system, making that a noob error instead of a badge of honor.
Forth machines don't carry the historical weight the lisp ones do, but I found my short visit to them mind expanding.
They make chips that run low level forth native.
The forth environment is like I understand the lisp machines to have been in the sense that it's your shell and your building tools into the environment as well as whatever your target program is. It's all kind of one monolithic thing.
Andrew (Television Executive)
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