PDP-1
Encyclopedia
The PDP-1 was the first computer
in Digital Equipment Corporation
's PDP
series and was first produced in 1960. It is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture at MIT
, BBN and elsewhere. The PDP-1 was also the original hardware for playing history's first game on a minicomputer, Steve Russell
's Spacewar!.
word size and had 4096 words as standard main memory (equivalent to 9,216 eight-bit byte
s, though the system actually used six-bit bytes), upgradable to words. The magnetic core memory
's cycle time was 5 microsecond
s (corresponding roughly to a "clock speed" of 200 kilohertz; consequently most arithmetic instructions took 10 microseconds (100,000 operations per second) because they used two memory cycles: one for the instruction, one for the operand
data fetch. Signed numbers were represented in one's complement
.
The PDP-1 was built mostly of DEC 1000-series System Building Blocks, using Micro-Alloy and Micro-Alloy-Diffused transistor
s with a rated switching speed of 5 MHz. The System Building Blocks were packaged into several 19-inch rack
s. The racks were themselves packaged into a single large mainframe case, with a hexagonal control panel containing switches and lights mounted to lay at table-top height at one end of the mainframe. Above the control panel was the system's standard input/output
solution, a punch tape reader and writer.
computer, designed and built at MIT Lincoln Laboratory
. The first PDP-1 was delivered to Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in November 1960, and formally accepted the next April. In 1962, DEC donated the engineering prototype PDP-1 to MIT, where it was placed in the room next to its ancestor, the TX-0 computer, which was by then on indefinite loan from Lincoln Laboratory.
In this setting, the PDP-1 quickly replaced the TX-0 as the favourite machine among the budding hacker culture, and served as the platform for a wide variety of "firsts" in the computing world. Perhaps best known among these is the first computerized video game, Spacewar!, but among the list are the first text editor
, word processor
, interactive debugger
, the first credible computer chess
program, and some of the earliest computerized music.
The PDP-1 sold in basic form for . BBN's system was quickly followed by orders from Lawrence Livermore
and Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL), and eventually 53 PDP-1s were delivered until production ended in 1969. All of these machines were still being actively used in 1970, and several were eventually saved. MIT's example was donated to The Computer Museum, Boston
, and from there ended up at the Computer History Museum
(CHM). A late version of Spacewar! on paper tape was still tucked into the case. PDP-1 #44 was found in a barn in Wichita, Kansas
in 1988, apparently formerly owned by one of the many aviation companies in the area, and rescued for the Digital Historical Collection, also eventually ending up at the CHM. AECL's computer was sent to Science North
, but was later scrapped.
The PDP-1 used punched paper tape as its primary storage medium. Unlike punched card
decks, which could be sorted and re-ordered, paper tape was difficult to physically edit. This inspired the creation of text-editing programs such as Expensive Typewriter
and TECO
. Because it was equipped with online and offline printers that were based on IBM
electric typewriter
mechanisms, it was capable of what, in 1980s terminology, would be called "letter-quality printing
" and therefore inspired TJ-2
, arguably the first word processor
.
The console typewriter was the product of a company named Soroban Engineering. It was an IBM Model B Electric typewriter
mechanism modified by the addition of switches to detect keypresses and solenoid
s to activate the typebar
s. It used a traditional typebar mechanism, not the "golfball" IBM Selectric typewriter
mechanism, which was not introduced until the next year. Lettercase was selected by raising and lowering the massive type basket. The Soroban was equipped with a two-color ribbon (red and black), and the interface allowed color selection. Programs commonly used color coding to distinguish user input from machine responses. The Soroban mechanism was unreliable and prone to jamming, particularly when shifting case or changing ribbon color, and was widely disliked.
Offline devices were typically Friden Flexowriter
s that had been specially built to operate with the FIO-DEC character coding used by the PDP-1. Like the console typewriter, these were built around a typing mechanism that was mechanically the same as an IBM Electric typewriter
. However, Flexowriters were highly reliable and often used for long unattended printing sessions. Flexowriters had electromechanical paper tape punches and readers which operated synchronously with the typewriter mechanism. Typing was performed about ten characters per second. A typical PDP-1 operating procedure was to output text to punched paper tape using the PDP-1's "high speed" (60 character per second) Teletype model BRPE punch, then to hand carry the tape to a Flexowriter for offline printing.
In later years, DECtape
drives were added to some PDP-1 systems, as a more convenient method of backing up programs and data, and to enable early timesharing. This latter application usually required a secondary storage medium for swapping programs and data in and out of core memory, without requiring manual intervention. For this purpose, DECtapes were far superior to paper tapes, in terms of reliability, durability, and speed. Early hard disk
s were expensive and notoriously unreliable; if available and working, they were used primarily for speed and not for permanent file storage.
s directly controlled by the processor (the audio signal was filtered with simple RC filters). Music was prepared via Peter Samson
's Harmony Compiler
, a sophisticated text-based program with some features specifically oriented toward the efficient coding of baroque music
. Several hours of music were prepared for it, including Bach fugue
s, all of Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik
, Christmas carols, and numerous popular songs.
(CHM). One is the prototype formerly used at MIT, and the other two are production PDP-1C machines. One of the latter, serial number 55 (the last PDP-1 made) has been restored to working order, is on exhibit, and is demonstrated on two Saturdays every month. The restoration is described on a special web page of the Computer History Museum. The demonstrations include:
At the Computer History Museum TX-0
alumni reunion in 1984, Gordon Bell
said DEC's products developed directly from the TX-2
, the successor to the TX-0 which had been developed at what Bell thought was a bargain price at the time, about . At the same meeting, Jack Dennis
said Ben Gurley's design for the PDP-1 was influenced by his work on the TX-0 display.
At the museum's PDP-1 restoration celebration in May 2006, Alan Kotok
said his Macintosh
PowerBook G4
laptop was 10,000 times faster, came with 100,000 times the RAM and 500,000 times the storage, was 1/2000 the size, and cost 1/100 as much.
Software simulations of the PDP-1 exist in SIMH
and MESS
, and binary image
paper tapes of the software exist in the bitsavers.org archives.
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
in Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
's PDP
Programmed Data Processor
Programmed Data Processor was the name of a series of minicomputers made by Digital Equipment Corporation. The name 'PDP' intentionally avoided the use of the term 'computer' because, at the time of the first PDPs, computers had a reputation of being large, complicated, and expensive machines, and...
series and was first produced in 1960. It is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, BBN and elsewhere. The PDP-1 was also the original hardware for playing history's first game on a minicomputer, Steve Russell
Steve Russell
Steve "Slug" Russell is a programmer and computer scientist most famous for creating Spacewar!, one of the earliest videogames, in 1961 with the fellow members of the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT working on a DEC Digital PDP-1...
's Spacewar!.
Description
The PDP-1 used an 18-bit18-bit
18 binary digits have unique combinations.-Example 18-bit computer architectures:* Possibly the most well-known 18-bit computer architectures are the PDP-1, PDP-4, PDP-7, PDP-9 and PDP-15 minicomputers produced by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1960 to 1975.* UNIVAC produced a number of...
word size and had 4096 words as standard main memory (equivalent to 9,216 eight-bit byte
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
s, though the system actually used six-bit bytes), upgradable to words. The magnetic core memory
Magnetic core memory
Magnetic-core memory was the predominant form of random-access computer memory for 20 years . It uses tiny magnetic toroids , the cores, through which wires are threaded to write and read information. Each core represents one bit of information...
's cycle time was 5 microsecond
Microsecond
A microsecond is an SI unit of time equal to one millionth of a second. Its symbol is µs.A microsecond is equal to 1000 nanoseconds or 1/1000 millisecond...
s (corresponding roughly to a "clock speed" of 200 kilohertz; consequently most arithmetic instructions took 10 microseconds (100,000 operations per second) because they used two memory cycles: one for the instruction, one for the operand
Operand
In mathematics, an operand is the object of a mathematical operation, a quantity on which an operation is performed.-Example :The following arithmetic expression shows an example of operators and operands:3 + 6 = 9\;...
data fetch. Signed numbers were represented in one's complement
One's complement
The ones' complement of a binary number is defined as the value obtained by inverting all the bits in the binary representation of the number . The ones' complement of the number then behaves like the negative of the original number in most arithmetic operations...
.
Transistor
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and power. It is composed of a semiconductor material with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current...
s with a rated switching speed of 5 MHz. The System Building Blocks were packaged into several 19-inch rack
19-inch rack
A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple equipment modules. Each module has a front panel that is wide, including edges or ears that protrude on each side which allow the module to be fastened to the rack frame with screws.-Overview and history:Equipment designed...
s. The racks were themselves packaged into a single large mainframe case, with a hexagonal control panel containing switches and lights mounted to lay at table-top height at one end of the mainframe. Above the control panel was the system's standard input/output
Input/output
In computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...
solution, a punch tape reader and writer.
History
The design of the PDP-1 was based on the pioneering TX-0TX-0
The TX-0, for Transistorized Experimental computer zero, but affectionately referred to as tixo , was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64K of 18-bit words of magnetic core memory. The TX-0 was built in 1955 and went online in 1956 and was used continually through the...
computer, designed and built at MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Lincoln Laboratory
MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and development activities focus on long-term technology development as well as...
. The first PDP-1 was delivered to Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in November 1960, and formally accepted the next April. In 1962, DEC donated the engineering prototype PDP-1 to MIT, where it was placed in the room next to its ancestor, the TX-0 computer, which was by then on indefinite loan from Lincoln Laboratory.
In this setting, the PDP-1 quickly replaced the TX-0 as the favourite machine among the budding hacker culture, and served as the platform for a wide variety of "firsts" in the computing world. Perhaps best known among these is the first computerized video game, Spacewar!, but among the list are the first text editor
Text editor
A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
, word processor
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
, interactive debugger
Debugger
A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs . The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an instruction set simulator , a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered but which...
, the first credible computer chess
Computer chess
Computer chess is computer architecture encompassing hardware and software capable of playing chess autonomously without human guidance. Computer chess acts as solo entertainment , as aids to chess analysis, for computer chess competitions, and as research to provide insights into human...
program, and some of the earliest computerized music.
The PDP-1 sold in basic form for . BBN's system was quickly followed by orders from Lawrence Livermore
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...
and Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL), and eventually 53 PDP-1s were delivered until production ended in 1969. All of these machines were still being actively used in 1970, and several were eventually saved. MIT's example was donated to The Computer Museum, Boston
The Computer Museum, Boston
The Computer Museum was a Boston, Massachusetts museum that opened in 1979 and operated in three different locations until 1999. It was once referred to as TCM and is sometimes called the Boston Computer Museum....
, and from there ended up at the Computer History Museum
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...
(CHM). A late version of Spacewar! on paper tape was still tucked into the case. PDP-1 #44 was found in a barn in Wichita, Kansas
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas.As of the 2010 census, the city population was 382,368. Located in south-central Kansas on the Arkansas River, Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County and the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area...
in 1988, apparently formerly owned by one of the many aviation companies in the area, and rescued for the Digital Historical Collection, also eventually ending up at the CHM. AECL's computer was sent to Science North
Science North
Science North is an interactive science museum in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.The complex, which is Northern Ontario's most popular tourist attraction, consists of two snowflake-shaped buildings on the southwestern shore of Lake Ramsey, just south of the city's downtown core, as well as a...
, but was later scrapped.
Peripherals
Punched card
A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...
decks, which could be sorted and re-ordered, paper tape was difficult to physically edit. This inspired the creation of text-editing programs such as Expensive Typewriter
Expensive Typewriter
Expensive Typewriter was a text editing program that ran on the DEC PDP-1 computer that had been recently delivered at MIT. Since it could drive an IBM Selectric typewriter , it may be considered the first word processing program, although it was not WYSIWYG, having no CRT display. It was written...
and TECO
Text Editor and Corrector
TECO is a text editor originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s, after which it was modified by 'just about everybody'...
. Because it was equipped with online and offline printers that were based on IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
electric typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
mechanisms, it was capable of what, in 1980s terminology, would be called "letter-quality printing
Letter-quality printer
A letter-quality printer was a form of computer impact printer that was able to print with the quality typically expected from a business typewriter such as an IBM Selectric.A letter-quality printer operates in much the same fashion as a typewriter...
" and therefore inspired TJ-2
TJ-2
TJ-2 was published by Peter Samson in May 1963 and is thought to be the first page layout program. Although it lacks page numbering, page headers and footers, TJ-2 is the first word processor to provide a number of essential typographic alignment and automatic typesetting features:*Columnation,...
, arguably the first word processor
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
.
The console typewriter was the product of a company named Soroban Engineering. It was an IBM Model B Electric typewriter
IBM Electric typewriter
The IBM Electric typewriters were a series of electric typewriters that IBM manufactured, starting in the mid-1930s. They used the conventional moving carriage and typebar mechanism, as opposed to the fixed carriage and type ball used in the IBM Selectric, introduced in 1961...
mechanism modified by the addition of switches to detect keypresses and solenoid
Solenoid
A solenoid is a coil wound into a tightly packed helix. In physics, the term solenoid refers to a long, thin loop of wire, often wrapped around a metallic core, which produces a magnetic field when an electric current is passed through it. Solenoids are important because they can create...
s to activate the typebar
Typebar
A typebar is an 'arm' inside a typewriter with a character on the end of it. There are generally two characters per typebar, one which will be printed if the corresponding key is struck by itself, the other of which will be printed if the corresponding key is struck while the shift key is depressed...
s. It used a traditional typebar mechanism, not the "golfball" IBM Selectric typewriter
IBM Selectric typewriter
The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful model line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on July 31, 1961.Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a traditional typewriter, the Selectric had a type element that rotated and...
mechanism, which was not introduced until the next year. Lettercase was selected by raising and lowering the massive type basket. The Soroban was equipped with a two-color ribbon (red and black), and the interface allowed color selection. Programs commonly used color coding to distinguish user input from machine responses. The Soroban mechanism was unreliable and prone to jamming, particularly when shifting case or changing ribbon color, and was widely disliked.
Offline devices were typically Friden Flexowriter
Friden Flexowriter
The Friden Flexowriter was a teleprinter, a heavy duty electric typewriter capable of being driven not only by a human typing, but also automatically by several methods including direct attachment to a computer and by use of paper tape....
s that had been specially built to operate with the FIO-DEC character coding used by the PDP-1. Like the console typewriter, these were built around a typing mechanism that was mechanically the same as an IBM Electric typewriter
IBM Electric typewriter
The IBM Electric typewriters were a series of electric typewriters that IBM manufactured, starting in the mid-1930s. They used the conventional moving carriage and typebar mechanism, as opposed to the fixed carriage and type ball used in the IBM Selectric, introduced in 1961...
. However, Flexowriters were highly reliable and often used for long unattended printing sessions. Flexowriters had electromechanical paper tape punches and readers which operated synchronously with the typewriter mechanism. Typing was performed about ten characters per second. A typical PDP-1 operating procedure was to output text to punched paper tape using the PDP-1's "high speed" (60 character per second) Teletype model BRPE punch, then to hand carry the tape to a Flexowriter for offline printing.
In later years, DECtape
DECtape
DECtape, originally called "Microtape", was a magnetic tape data storage medium used with many Digital Equipment Corporation computers, including the PDP-6, PDP-8, LINC-8, PDP-10, PDP-11, PDP-12, and the PDP-15. On DEC's 32-bit systems, VAX/VMS support for it was implemented but did not become an...
drives were added to some PDP-1 systems, as a more convenient method of backing up programs and data, and to enable early timesharing. This latter application usually required a secondary storage medium for swapping programs and data in and out of core memory, without requiring manual intervention. For this purpose, DECtapes were far superior to paper tapes, in terms of reliability, durability, and speed. Early hard disk
Hard disk
A hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
s were expensive and notoriously unreliable; if available and working, they were used primarily for speed and not for permanent file storage.
Computer music
MIT hackers also used the PDP-1 for playing music in four-part harmony, using some special hardware — four flip-flopFlip-flop (electronics)
In electronics, a flip-flop or latch is a circuit that has two stable states and can be used to store state information. The circuit can be made to change state by signals applied to one or more control inputs and will have one or two outputs. It is the basic storage element in sequential logic...
s directly controlled by the processor (the audio signal was filtered with simple RC filters). Music was prepared via Peter Samson
Peter Samson
Peter R. Samson is an American computer scientist, best known for creating pioneering computer software....
's Harmony Compiler
Harmony Compiler
Harmony Compiler was written by Peter Samson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . The compiler was designed to encode music for the PDP-1 and built on an earlier program Samson wrote for the TX-0 computer.]...
, a sophisticated text-based program with some features specifically oriented toward the efficient coding of baroque music
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
. Several hours of music were prepared for it, including Bach fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
s, all of Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
The Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, K. 525 was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1787. The work is more commonly known by the title Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The German title means "a little serenade", though it is often rendered more literally but less accurately as "a little night music"...
, Christmas carols, and numerous popular songs.
Current status
Only three PDP-1 computers are still known to exist, and all three are in the collection of the Computer History MuseumComputer History Museum
The Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...
(CHM). One is the prototype formerly used at MIT, and the other two are production PDP-1C machines. One of the latter, serial number 55 (the last PDP-1 made) has been restored to working order, is on exhibit, and is demonstrated on two Saturdays every month. The restoration is described on a special web page of the Computer History Museum. The demonstrations include:
- the game Spacewar!
- graphics demonstrations such as Snowflake
- playing music
At the Computer History Museum TX-0
TX-0
The TX-0, for Transistorized Experimental computer zero, but affectionately referred to as tixo , was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64K of 18-bit words of magnetic core memory. The TX-0 was built in 1955 and went online in 1956 and was used continually through the...
alumni reunion in 1984, Gordon Bell
Gordon Bell
C. Gordon Bell is an American computer engineer and manager. An early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation 1960–1966, Bell designed several of their PDP machines and later became Vice President of Engineering 1972-1983, overseeing the development of the VAX...
said DEC's products developed directly from the TX-2
TX-2
The MIT Lincoln Laboratory TX-2 computer was the successor to the Lincoln TX-0 and was known for its role in advancing both artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.- Specifications :...
, the successor to the TX-0 which had been developed at what Bell thought was a bargain price at the time, about . At the same meeting, Jack Dennis
Jack Dennis
Jack Dennis is a computer scientist and retired MIT professor.Dennis entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949 as an electrical engineering major; he received his MS degree in 1954, and continued doctoral research and received his ScD in 1958...
said Ben Gurley's design for the PDP-1 was influenced by his work on the TX-0 display.
At the museum's PDP-1 restoration celebration in May 2006, Alan Kotok
Alan Kotok
Alan Kotok was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation and at the World Wide Web Consortium...
said his Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
PowerBook G4
PowerBook G4
The PowerBook G4 are a series of notebook computers that were manufactured, marketed, and sold by Apple, Inc. between 2001 and 2006 as part of its PowerBook line. It uses the PowerPC G4 processor, initially produced by Motorola and later by Freescale, after Motorola spun off its semiconductor...
laptop was 10,000 times faster, came with 100,000 times the RAM and 500,000 times the storage, was 1/2000 the size, and cost 1/100 as much.
Software simulations of the PDP-1 exist in SIMH
SIMH
SIMH is a highly portable, multi-system emulator which runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, OpenVMS, and other operating systems...
and MESS
MESS
Multi Emulator Super System is an emulator for many game consoles and computer systems, based on the MAME core.The primary purpose of MESS is to preserve decades of computer and console history...
, and binary image
Binary image
A binary image is a digital image that has only two possible values for each pixel. Typically the two colors used for a binary image are black and white though any two colors can be used. The color used for the object in the image is the foreground color while the rest of the image is the...
paper tapes of the software exist in the bitsavers.org archives.
See also
- Spacewar!
- Timeline of computingTimeline of computingThis article presents a detailed timeline of events in the history of computing. For a narrative explaining the overall developments, see the related history of computing hardware and history of computer science....
- History of computers
- History of computer scienceHistory of computer scienceThe history of computer science began long before the modern discipline of computer science that emerged in the twentieth century, and hinted at in the centuries prior...
External links
- Restoring the DEC PDP-1 Computer Exhibit — The Computer History MuseumComputer History MuseumThe Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...
's restoration project - CHM Archives – The Computer History Museum's Moving Image resources on their PDP-1 and the restoration project. Includes some music files.
- DEC PDP-1 information – Website by greeng3@obscure-reference.com, including DEC's 1963 PROGRAMMED DATA PROCESSOR-1 HANDBOOK)
- bitsavers.org PDP-1 directory – Scanned documentation incl PDP-1 handbook, maintenance manual, price list, diagnostic documentation, etc.
- PDP-1 Music – Listen to MP3s of music created on the PDP-1
- The Dot Eaters entry on the PDP-1 and its use in the development of the first videogame, Spacewar!
- Story of the development of the PDP-1 from the original DEC documentation, including letters of delivery, price sheets, and photos.
- PDP-1 emulator in Java running Spacewar! code.
- DEC PDP-1 music (video on YouTube)
- History of the PDP-1 at Stanford University
- Photo of PDP-1 at LRNL.