meFrans
Jef PoskanzerHappy 55th birthday to the PDP-11! Which had the best front panels ever.
Fubaroque@jef Showing the address bus and the data bus… what more do you want? 🤩
Toby
John Maxwell@jef Yeah. Those're so pretty that I don't even mind replicas.
pzmyers 🕷@jef Wait. I used to work on one of those, but it wasn't that long ago. 1975…oh, wait.
Now I feel so old.
Enema Cowboy@jef It is aesthetically more pleasing than the front panels of Data General Machines.
Lauren Weinstein@jef There was a time when I could toggle the 11/45 boot sequence into those babies in about 5 seconds with my eyes closed.
@PeterLudemann @jef I'll never rid myself of the pre-fsck memories of manually plowing through crashed filesystems with icheck and dcheck and ncheck and my personal favorite clri, etc. deep into the night as users were screaming bloody murder for the system to come back up.
Mike Stockdale
Eric Goodwin@jef learned PDP-11 Assembly back in university. Still have a soft spot for it
@jef Aah...yes; thanks for sharing. I fondly remember working with one.
Shafik Yaghmour
Shafik Yaghmour (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image The C abstract machine (pdp-11) #programming
Ophitoxaemia@jef I programmed one of those that controlled a plotter. So long ago I forgot what they looked like!
Guillaume Ross@jef My dad had that 11/70 switch panel with the red-pink-purpleish keys at some point, no idea where it is now :(
@jef I never USED it used it (cause obviously it was in our house and we didn't have the PDP-11 at home) but I thought it looked so LCARS-ish, I loved flipping the switches on it
jwz@jef So nice. Giving a real LCARS vibe.
Joe ❌👑@jwz @jef The first assembly language I learned. The low-end ones didn't have a boot ROM so you actually toggled in the boot loader; I've done this back in the early 1980s. https://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11_Bootstrap_Loader
rrmutt@jef Someone had a think in octal mindset there.
Bob Horowitz@jef In 1975, while working for Local Electronics, I wrote an assembler for the PDP-11/45 and 11/70. I spent a lot of time flipping those switches and booting.
lisa c@jef No idea what this is but it’s pretty
SimplyTheGuest@lmc @jef mini-computers! Back from the 70s before all computers turned beige or black. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11
Σ(i³) = (Σi)²@jef
The pdp11 is the best (and only valid) anti-vax argument in existence...
The pdp11 is the best (and only valid) anti-vax argument in existence...
Diane Bruce@jef I always loved assembler on the PDP-11.
LR@jef i bet one can program some ill trap beats on these
Merc@jef It's amazing to me that DEC went with such a user-hostile data entry system, when the PDP-11 came out years and years after the FADAC.
The FADAC uses a data-entry system that looks fairly modern and easy, and an output system that could be mistaken for a modern monitor.
https://youtu.be/d_I_4CqZxoI?t=26
Compare that to the PDP-11:
https://youtu.be/0n3UFtiyxwA?t=282
Don't get me wrong, the industrial designer did a fantastic job. But, really, entering octal data by flipping a series of binary switches?
FADAC is used by US 25th Infantry Division to direct artillery fire at Division H...HD Stock Footage
Larry Horn@jef
I saved the front panels from the PDP-8/e and PDP-11/70 my employer discarded. Prized possessions.
I saved the front panels from the PDP-8/e and PDP-11/70 my employer discarded. Prized possessions.
Winchell Chung ⚛🚀That front panel is so 70's. I love it!