The DEC PDP-8 computer, introduced almost 50 years ago on March 22, 1965, is
generally recognized as the most important small computer of the 1960's.
It was the least expensive parallel general purpose computer on the market,
the first computer sold on a retail basis, and the first parallel general
purpose digital computer sold in a table-top configuration.
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
The above pages replace and expand on FAQ pages that were formerly distributed
in the alt.sys.pdp8 newsgroup back in the 1990s.
Programmer's Reference Material
A modern manual (under construction):
The pocket referencence cards listed below are reproductions of original
DEC documentation distributed with the PDP-8:
The following documents are reproductions of original DEC documentation:
Hardware Reference Material
Odds and Ends
- The University of Iowa PDP-8
- My PDP-8 Collection
- Trademarks
used by Digital Equipment Corporation
- A largely PAL-8
compatable cross assembler,
Written in C, it is quite portable, and it produces either RIM or BIN
format output.
- An enhanced
PAL-8 assembler is also available. This is based on an enhancement
of the above by Gary Messenbrink to support BART's fleet of PDP-8 systems,
and has seen additional improvement under David Gesswein's curatorship.
- A UNIX
based PDP-8 emulator; this can be built for either X-Windows or
dumb terminals. It is written in C, and it has been run under AIX,
Solaris, and BSD UNIX, Linux and the Windows NT Posix environment.
It has been tested under OS/8 running from an emulated RX01 diskette.
Documentation of this emulator's
data formats
is available.
- A
collection of PDP-8 core images for the above emulator. Includes
the RIM and BIN loaders (with source), FOCAL 1969, and RX01 bootstrap
code.
- an image
of OS/8 Version 3Q on 2 RX01 diskettes bootable under the above emulator.
Includes PAL8, DIRECT, PIP, EDIT, TECO, BASIC, F4 and more! (Note: As of
Aug. 13, 1996, thanks to Bob Supnik, this is distributed with a free
non-commercial use licence from DEC.)
- Kermit
the well known file transfer tool, a version for OS/8 mostly by Charles Lasner.
As of January 2003, the
official Kermit web site
now supports the PDP-8 family of machines.
- A UNIX
based PDP-8 emulator for X-Windows, written in Modula-3 and tested
under SunOS5.
Explanatory
notes are available.
-
Robert Krten
has a disassembler that can help reconstruct source code from RIM and BIN
formatted paper tapes.
- Notes on the History of the PDP-8
WWW pages organized by others
Institutional Pages
- The
Charles Babbage Institute; a scholarly institution devoted to the
history of computing. They house the corporate archives of many
former computer manufacturers.
- The Computer History Museum.
While the original Computer Museum in Boston wandered into
computer literacy and touchy-feely displays on the
innards of modern PCs, their excellent work on historical preservation has
been taken up by this west-coast branch.
- The (British) National Museum of
Computing, at Bletchley Park. They have an extraordinary collection.
- The Digital Alumni Inc,
an alumni association for those who once worked at DEC.
- The Retro-Computing Society
of Rhode Island; began as an informal association to further the
preservation of vintage computers in southeastern New England. They have
an open house on the third Saturday of every month, and their collection
includes a LINC-8 and numerous more recent PDP-8 systems.
- The American Computer Museum
of Bozeman, Montana. They have a table-top classic PDP-8.
- (Defunct link)
The Computer History Association
of California; devoted to preserving the history of California's computer
industry.
- (Defunct link)
The Historical Computer
Society; their collection is currently limited to microcomputers, but
their magazine, Historically Brewed, is promising but, so far, published
only irregularly.
- (Defunct link)
The DFWLUG DECUS PDP-8/E;
good photos of a nicely maintained PDP-8/E system in north Texas.
Private Collections
- Paul Pierce's collection;
his computer collection is huge, including everything from first generation
mainframes to microcomputers, and his web pages include are on-line photos
of many of his machines, including representative PDP-8 models.
- Jay Jaeger's
computer collection; a large collection with on-line photos
of many nicely configured machines, including a PDP-8/L and a PDP-12, as
well as related minicomputers from other manufacturers such as Data General
and Hewlett Packard.
-
Robert Krten's computer collection also known as the
Parse Software Devices Museum, is dominated by PDP-8 and PDP-11 equipment.
He has a nice page documenting the effort required to restore a PDP-8/I
to working order.
- Dan Mathias's
collection is interesting, mostly microcomputers, but also a good
working PDP-8/m. Each
item documented with a photo and minimal text. Mathias's web site is
primarily devoted to pdp-8.org
Aaron Nabil's PDP-8 documentation catalog.
Aaron has been an important resource for PDP-8 collectors,
but his web pages are not extensive.
- Carl Friend's
Minicomputer Museum; focuses on PDP-11 and Data General equipment, but
has both a LINC-8 and an 8/I. There are some decent
on-line photos of many machines and peripherals.
- Eric Smith's
collection; a balanced collection including 4 machines from the PDP-8
family. No photos, but extensive lists of links to information sources.
- (Defunct link)
Jim's Computer
Garage, run by Jim Willing.
The minicomputer section includes an
8/I, 8/E and 8/M, with excellent photos and descriptions, including some
internal details. The peripherals section includes a number of classic
DEC peripherals, including the RK-05 hard drive, RX-02 floppy drive (with
good photos of the internals) and the TU-55 and TU-56 DECtape drives..
- (Defunct link)
PDP8.COM John Bradatanu's commercial
venture in minicomputer restoration and maintenance. The
writeup on the PDP-8/S
includes a great quote from Saul Dinman about how the machine came to be and
a photo of the original laboratory prototype Dinman built. There is also a
good illustrated narative
description of the restoration process for 8/S serial number 566.
- (Defunct link)
Varga Akos Endre's
collection is heavy on PDP-11 and VAX systems, but has interesting
coverage of Hungarian clones from the cold war era, including some
documentation for the TPA series of PDP-8, PDP-11 and VAX clones.
- (Defunct link)
Bob's Computer
Museum; Bob Manners has a growing collection, including a PDP-8/E; most of
the photo illustrations are scanned in from PDP-8 handbooks.
- (Defunct link)
Anthony Clifton's collecstion
(and small business); heavy on microcomputers, but moving into bigger
machines.
Other
-
Megan Gentry's home page (archived);
this includes links to information on many DEC computers and sources
for Robert Supnik's emulators for many DEC computers.
- (Defunct link)
The Virtual Museum of Computing (Oxford, UK); this is a serious attempt
at creating an on-line museum, combining material created at Oxford with
material available on the web.
- (Defunct link)
The Computer Culture
Museum (Germany); as with the above, this is a serious attempt
to build an on-line (and physical) museum of computing.
