PDP-10 Fits In Your Living Room

March 13, 2024 by 8 Comments

[Oscar] at Obsolescence Guaranteed is well-known for fun replicas of the PDP-8 and PDP-11 using the Raspberry Pi (along with some other simulated vintage computers). His latest attempt is the PDP-10, and you can see how it looks in the demo video below.

Watching the video will remind you of every old movie or TV show you’ve ever seen with a computer, complete with typing noise. The PDP-10, also known as a DECsystem-10, was a mainframe computer that usually ran TOPS-10. These were technically “mainframes” in 1966, although the VAX eclipsed the system. By 1983 (the end of the PDP-10’s run), around 1,500 had been sold, including ones that ran at Harvard, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and — of course — MIT. They also found homes at CompuServe and Tymshare.

The original 36-bit machine used transistors and was relatively slow. By the 1970s, newer variants used ICs or ECL and gained some speed. A cheap version using the AM2901 bit-slice CPU and a familiar 8080 controlling the system showed up in 1978 and billed itself as “the world’s lowest cost mainframe.”

The Knight terminals were very unusual for the day. They each used a PDP-11 and had impressive graphics capability compared to similar devices from the early 1970s. You can see some of that in the demo video.

Naturally, anyone who used a PDP-10 would think a Raspberry Pi was a supercomputer, and they wouldn’t be wrong. Still, these machines were the launching pad for Adventure, Zork, and Altair Basic, which spawned Microsoft.

The cheap version of these used bitslice which we’ve been talking about lately. [Oscar] is also known for the KIMUno, which we converted into a COSMAC Elf.

μRepRap: Taking RepRap Down To Micrometer-Level Manufacturing

March 10, 2024 by 30 Comments

When the RepRap project was started in 2005 by [Dr Adrian Bowyer], the goal was to develop low-cost 3D printers, capable of printing most of their own components. The project slipped into a bit of a lull by 2016 due to the market being increasingly flooded with affordable FDM printers from a growing assortment of manufacturers. Now it seems that the RepRap project may have found a new impetus, in the form of sub-millimeter level fabrication system called the μRepRap as announced by [Vik Olliver] on the RepRap project blog, with accompanying project page.

The basic technology is based around the OpenFlexure project’s Delta Stage, which allows for very precise positioning of an imaging element, or conceivably a fabrication tool. As a first step, [Vik] upgrade the original delta stage to a much reinforced one that can accept larger NEMA17 stepper motors. This also allows for standard 3D printer electronics to control the system much like an FDM printer, only at much smaller scales and with new types of materials. The current prototype [Vik] made has a claimed step accuracy of 3 µm, with a range of tools and deposition materials being considered, including photosensitive resins.

It should be noted here that although this is a project in its infancy, it has solid foundations due to projects like OpenFlexure. Will μRepRap kickstart micrometer-level manufacturing like FDM 3D printing before? As an R&D project it doesn’t come with guarantees, but color us excited.

Thanks to [Tequin] for the tip.

The Insurance Buys The Wheelchair, But Not The App To Run It

March 9, 2024 by 35 Comments

The writer Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification to describe the way that services decline in quality as their users become the product. He was talking about online services when he came up with the word, but the same is very much true when it comes to hardware. Items which once just worked now need apps and online services, with marginal benefit to the user if any. It’s one thing when it’s your soundbar or your washing machine, but thanks to Lemmy user [@win95] from the Netherlands we’ve seen a far more egregious example. People with disabilities are being provided with new powered wheelchairs through their medical insurance, but are then discovering that unaffordable in-app purchases are needed to use their features. Continue reading “The Insurance Buys The Wheelchair, But Not The App To Run It” →

Rosie The Robot Runs For Real

March 9, 2024 by 2 Comments

On the recent 256th episode of the Hackaday podcast, [Kristina] mentioned her favorite fictional robot was Rosie from The Jetsons. [Robert Zollna] must agree since he built a reimagined Rosie and it even caught the notice of mainstream outlet People magazine.

We didn’t find much information outside of the TikTok video (see below; you can use the Guest button if you don’t have an account). However, there were a few clever ideas here. First, the robot mechanism is actually Rosie’s vacuum cleaner. Like a tail wagging a dog, an off-the-shelf floor vac tows the robot body.

Rosie herself is clearly an office chair base with an artistic body. The head rotates, and the mouth appears to open and close, so there’s apparently a little more electronics inside, but that’s nothing you couldn’t throw together with some RC servos and an ESP32.

Some videos cover the build so you might be able to glean more details, but the bite-sized videos aren’t very descriptive even though they are fun to watch. If you thought folks documenting their projects on YouTube was bad, you’re really gonna love the TikTok generation.

We like the look of Rosie, but as a practical matter, we need our robot vac to be smaller, not larger. However, using these off-the-shelf robots as a quick start for a robotics project is reasonable. Especially if you can pick up one cheap. Not that that’s a new idea. They even make stripped-down units with the intent that you don’t want to use them as cleaners.

Continue reading “Rosie The Robot Runs For Real” →

Dial-Up Is Still, Just Barely, A Thing

March 6, 2024 by 93 Comments

In an era dominated by broadband and wireless cellular networks, it might come as a surprise to many that dial-up internet services still exist in the United States. This persistence is not a mere relic of nostalgia — but a testament to the diverse and uneven nature of internet infrastructure across the country.

Yes, dial-up internet, with those screechy, crackly tones, remains a useful tool in areas where modern, high-speed internet services are either unaffordable or unavailable. Subscriber numbers are tiny, but some plough on and access the Internet by the old ways, not the new.

Continue reading “Dial-Up Is Still, Just Barely, A Thing” →

For Today Only, Pi=3

February 29, 2024 by 47 Comments

In 1897 the state assembly of the American state of Indiana famously tried and failed to pass a bill which would have had the effect of denying the value of the mathematical constant Pi. It was an attempt to define a method to “square the circle”, or draw a square of the same area as a given circle through a series of compass and straight edge steps. It’s become something of a running joke and internet meme, and of course defining Pi exactly remains as elusive as ever.

Today and today alone though, you can in one sense claim that Pi is 3, because it’s twelve years since the launch of the original Raspberry Pi. The 29th of February 2012 was a leap day, and today being the third leap day since, could be claimed by a date pedant to be the third birthday of the little board from Cambridge. It’s all a bit of fun, but the Pi folks have marked the occasion by featuring an LED birthday cake.

Three leap days ago, your scribe was up at the crack of dawn to be one of the first to snag a board, only to witness the websites of the two distributors at the time, RS and Farnell, immediately go down under the denial of service formed by many thousands of other would-be Pi owners with the same idea. It would be lunchtime before the sites recovered enough to slowly buy a Pi, and it would be May before the computer arrived.

The Pi definitely arrived with a bang, but at tweleve years old is it still smoking? We think so, while it’s normalized the idea of an affordable little board to run Linux to the extent that it’s one of a crowd, the Pi folks have managed to stay relevant and remain the trend setter for their sector rather than Arduino-style becoming an unwilling collective term.

We’ve said this before here at Hackaday, that while the Pi boards are good, it’s not them alone which sets them apart from the clones but their support and software. Perhaps their greatest achievement is that a version of the latest Raspberry Pi OS can still run on that board ordered in February 2012, something unheard of elsewhere in single board computers. If you still have an original Pi don’t forget this, while it’s not the quickest any more there are still plenty of tasks at which they can excel. Meanwhile with their move into branded silicon and their PCIe architecture move we think things are looking exciting, and we look forward to another 12 years and three birthdays for them. Happy 3rd birthday, Raspberry Pi!