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So many switches. This is the CPU of a PDP 11.

#pdp 11 #pixel art #my art #retro computing #computer

Going Forth Into the Past

You want to find a higher level language that’s really easy to port to various architectures spanning about 50 years? Brian Stuart has you covered with the classic language Forth. Brian even implemented it himself for his LSI-11 (basically a PDP-11/03 on a chip) back when he was in college, and decided to dust it off for the first time in decades just for VCF East. He also had a 6809 based SBC, a SPARC Station, and the Pocket Chip arm based machine. You name it, Forth will be there. He even was emulating a Tektronix graphics terminal on his laptop, drawing spirograph-like images using Forth -- he later got to test it on the real thing.

“In the late 1960s Charles Moore developed the Forth programming language as a tool for efficiently developing control systems. Ever since, it’s found application in domains ranging from tiny embedded systems, to monitoring sorting belts at FedEx, to implementing workstation consoles, to controlling large telescopes, to controlling large laser arrays doing fusion research. Like LISP before it, Forth developed an avid following of programmers who understood how to use it as a meta-language for creating application specific languages customized to the problem at hand. It has a direct connection to the theory of Turing completeness and is one of the simplest languages to implement. This exhibit celebrates this amazing language by demonstrating several different implementations of Forth on a variety of hardware, all accompanied by educational material to help the viewer understand that concepts behind the language.”

#VCF East XII #vcfexii #commodorez goes to vcfexii #vintage computer festival east xii #vintage computer festival east #forth #pdp 11 #lsi 11 #pocket chip #6809 #sparc #digital equipment corporation #tektronix graphics mode

MicroVax and PDP-11

I’ll admit, I didn’t spend alot of time at Douglas Taylor’s exhibit, because I wasn’t sure what I should play with on the terminals. The little demos going by were fun to watch though! Therefore, I will let his exhibit description speak for itself:

“In the mid-1980s Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) began selling smaller versions of the popular VAX and PDP-11 line of computers. These were big hits since they fit into the office environments and blended in… somewhat. The exhibit consists of a working MicroVax II running VMS 5.5 and 7.2, along with a working MicroPDP-11/53 running RT-11. Each computer is configured to boot from a SCSI interface disk. Rather than actual SCSI disks the computers use SCSI2SD adapters to attach microSD memory cards as disk storage.”