If you’ve spent a few years around Hackaday, you’ve probably seen or heard of the DEC PDP-11 before. It was one of the great machines of the minicomputer era, back when machines like the Apple ][ and the Commodore 64 weren’t even a gleam in their creator’s eyes. You’ve also probably heard of Unix, given that so many of us use Linux on the regular. Well, now you can see them both in action, as [HappyComputerGuy] fires up real Unix on a real PDP-11/73… with a real Teletype Model 33 to boot!
It’s a fascinating dive into the tech of yesteryear, with a rich dose of history to boot. It’s mindboggling to think that video terminals were once prohibitively expensive and that teletype printers were the norm for interacting with computers. The idea of interacting with a live machine via a printed page is alien, but it’s how things were done! We’re also treated to a lesson on how to boot the PDP-11 with 2.11BSD which is a hilariously manual process. It also takes a very long time. [HappyComputerGuy] then shows off the Teletype Model 33 rocking the banner command to great effect.
It’s awesome to see this hardware as it would really have been used back in its heyday. Computing really was different before the microcomputer format became mainstream. It’s not the only PDP-11 we’ve seen lately, either! Video after the break.
My first job was an asr33, an intel 8080 and a paper tape reader. Them were the days.
Learned programming in Pascal on a PDP11 which was given as ‘scrap’ by a local company to our school. We’re talking 1985 here ;-)
Similarly, in the early ’80s I used hardcopy terminals (can’t recall which vendor / model) connected to PDP-11s at two different institutions for BASIC lessons.
One was a summer “computer camp” I attended with my best friend. The two of us competed for writing the most lines of code, which we judged by laying our listings out side-by-side on the floor of his living room. Longest printout wins. I might still have one or two of those stashed away somewhere, though it may have faded into illegibility.
1982, Arizona State University. College of Engineering had several PDP11/70 machines for student use. Ah the good ol’ days, waiting in hour long lines to get at a DECwriter, hanging around the output window for results, getting a computer *with a modem* in my dorm room so I didn’t have to go to the terminal rooms… :D
My first computer job in 1977 was putting together PDP 11s. We had a paper tape reader and a teletype terminal. But had to use the register keys to get it to read the paper tape.
My first real computer was a DEC PDP-8/I with a TTY33. Early 1970’s. Fond memories.
Learned the Focal language.
Same here, except it was a PDP-8/L. 1973. Learned FOCAL, then assembly language and had the best time building a human reaction-time experiment setup for the grad students (Industrial Engineering Dept, Ohio State). I wish I could find an excuse to build a PiDP-11!
My army MOS in the mid 80’s was 31J – teletype repair. I miss working on them. Some days I wish I had access to one, then I remember the noise and constant smell of warm machine oil :D
Had a part time job in college repairing ASR33s for the computing center. Had one in my dorm room, later I replaced it with a DEC VT05 which I cobbled togetther from scrap parts.
Looks like the guy’s 33 has (or had) an integrated modem…the buttons on the right hand side are labelled for modem control
How we were introduced to computer programming in high school. About 10 teletype machines in the class room. It was fun actually. It is NOT alien at all ;) . We used lots of paper back then. When I interned at the local power company during college, the primary interface to the Prime system was teletype machines. Again not alien at all. Must be to what we term the ‘mouse cripple’ generation though :D who have a tough time just with the command-line …
As for booting, yep… Get the 1/3 size PDP 11/70 front panel and you can relive those days by keying in the bootstrap code and then boot from it. Fun to do a few times… but gets old quick :) .
Where do you find roll paper and paper tape for teletype stuff these days?
Google is your friend
https://www.aetherltd.com/supplies.html (among others) Classic yellow appears to be available on eBay
My PDP-11/70 days were in a missile lab, but running RSX-11 rather than UNIXen. It was fun to learn, but I eventually found myself looking longingly at the Suns and SGIs the kids in the lab next door were playing with, and switched departments.
A big hooray! for glass terminals.
Much more reliable and friendlier to ears and nerves.
An electro-mechanical teletype machine can fail.
See “Andromeda Strain”, the scene with the endless paper being stuck in the bell.
ASR33s are remarkably durable. Glass terminals do however have the dual advantages of speed and silence!
Source: former repairer of same
I worked with a pdp 11/34 with an LA36 and later an LA120 hardcopy terminal. it was the preferred method as we had a record of console events in the computer room. They worked great, but they were slow with the baud rate at really low values and the printing was crazy slow. however, we didn’t do that much work from the console….
Its fun to see it decades later…
Historically the Berkeley Software Distribution (Unix) 1BSD and 2BSD run natively on the DEC PDP-11.[1][2] Today’s NetBSD has no support (that I can easily find) for the PDP-11, but there is some NetBSD support for the DEC VAX platform.[3][4]
* References:
1. 1BSD (PDP-11)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Berkeley_Software_Distribution#1BSD_(PDP-11)
2. 2BSD (PDP-11)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Berkeley_Software_Distribution#2BSD_(PDP-11)
3. Platforms supported by NetBSD
https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/
4. NetBSD/vax
https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/vax/
I believe the man is insane. I had to work on that stuff when it was new, and only insanity can explain why anyone would want to do that now.