I Restored a 1983 PDP-11 UNIX Powerhouse—and You Can Log In Right Now!

Comments · 452

• DA

  @DavesGarage · 1 year ago · pinned

  To connect:<br><br>telnet <a href="http://pdp1173.com/">pdp1173.com</a><br>login: guest<br><br>-- if that doesn&apos;t work --<br><br>telnet <a href="http://davepl.dyndns.org/">davepl.dyndns.org</a><br>login: guest

  94

• EX

  @Ex-Polyphia-Fan · 10 hours ago

  How is there 21 people who don&apos;t like this? That&apos;s crazy. Dave puts out some of the best and most informative computer videos out there.

• RH

  @rhodaborrocks1654 · 1 year ago

  I&apos;ve got a funny story about a rogue RL02 disk drive. &nbsp;I&apos;d just serviced one and left the exerciser running while I popped out for lunch. &nbsp;Now, the exerciser used to drive the heads back and forth pretty enthusiastically and produced a lot of energy, the floor in that room was polished and the cabinet I was using was on castors, so the whole thing walked itself into the corner and jammed the door closed, we couldn&apos;t get back in after lunch, we had to call a carpenter out to remove the fire escape door so we could get in that way. &nbsp;We fitted caps over the wheels after that to stop it walking about.

  49

• 3E

  @3eyedfishy · 1 year ago

  Greetings from Canada. &nbsp;Server worked great for me. &nbsp;I was captured by Klingons and tortured mercilessly. &nbsp;10/10, would login again.

  55

• OL

  @OldSkoolRocker5150 · 5 months ago (edited)

  Ahhhh .... the VT220! I&apos;ve only been an operator, not a programmer but I spent many an hour pounding the keys on one of these babies. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

  1

• DA

  @danoconnell1833 · 1 year ago

  Dave, I&apos;m a long time computer user (my first was IBM running two 5 1/4&quot; floppies) but I&apos;ve never been a real techie. I love watching you wax poetic about the old systems. Most of it is Greek to me - I recognize maybe every other word in the video - but I appreciate it nonetheless. Your depth of knowledge and love of the legacy shine through. Thank you.

  55

• US

  @UsagiElectric · 1 year ago

  Hellorld!

  47

• HE

  @henriquestanke · 1 year ago

  The BEST youtube channel EVER.

  24

• LO

  @louarthur7648 · 4 months ago

  This brings back some memories.

• BI

  @BillyDickson · 1 year ago (edited)

  Thanks Dave, thats very nice of you, I&apos;ll give it a week for the rush to slow down then try.

  21

• WT

  @wtmayhew · 1 year ago (edited)

  Thank you! &nbsp;Boy was that a flood of memories from the mid 1970s and on. &nbsp;I worked on 11/34s, 11/40s, 11/70s, &nbsp;11/03, &nbsp;and Vax 11/750s running various flavors of RT-11, RSX-11, RSTS, TOPS-20, BSD 2.11 and Ultrix flavors. &nbsp;I know what you mean about cable management and the red stripe not always being pin 1. &nbsp;The other chore which verged on being a full time job was making serial cables for a sea of different terminal types and printers. &nbsp;One of my favorite tools was a self-powered box with two DB-25 connectors and two rows of red/green LEDs separated by DIP switches for all 25 wires. &nbsp;There was a square pin corresponding to each position on either side of the switches. &nbsp;The box came with a bunch of jumpers for the pins. &nbsp;That made it easy to figure out what sort of cross connects and local feedback connections were required to make a given null modem. &nbsp;It seemed like almost every model of equipment needed a different null modem. &nbsp;Once that was done, then it was on to resolving fights with baud rates, xon/xoff, need DTR/DSR or not, and hardware flow control buffering, in the O/S configurations, then it was on to termcap definitions and compiling terminfo for the device. &nbsp;It is so much easier now. &nbsp;I can’t say I miss that part of the old days.

  23

• JO

  @JolieMeyer · 1 year ago

  My dad had a &quot;personal&quot; PDP-11/03 computer with 2 floppies, extended arithmetic chip, and a Tektronix 4051 micro with vector display that he had first used in college. He kept them in working order for years, and I played games on them he had written as well as the classic Adventure, Star Trek and Zork. &nbsp;He ended up selling the machines to a gold recycler because of the gold contact pads and gold wires in the integrated circuits. Nowadays I hand out Pi Zero dev kits to my students to learn on, but the thrill and wonder of having a personal set of hardware and software to tinker with just never goes away!

  14