Recreating Hacker History

A collector of vintage computing equipment will have no trouble getting their hands on a wide range of machines from the mid-1970s and on via second-hand markets today. Commodore 64s, Atari 8-bit computers, and Tandy Color Computers were made in such large numbers that there are still plenty of working examples to go around today. Many enthusiasts are content to end their collection at the beginning of the personal computing revolution, but that is by no means where digital computing began.

That is probably for the best in one sense, because when digging into the earlier days of digital computing — like the 1950s and 1960s — the machines get far more rare (and weird to a modern eye), so you can drool over them, but you cannot own them (or understand how to operate them if you could). But in another sense, it is a shame, because these early machines have so much to teach us, and in some cases, we can even see echoes of these computers’ early architectures in much later machines.

The DEC PDP-1, first produced in 1959, in particular, is a machine that every reader of Hackster News should be familiar with. After all, this is the machine that gave birth to hacker culture. Without the PDP-1, we might be called something like DoingUnexpectedThingsWithTech News. It’s got a nice ring to it, but it’s just not the same.

However, you can’t get a real PDP-1. Only 53 units were sold by DEC, and they cost the equivalent of $1.3 million today. Good luck picking one up on EBay. But thanks to the work of Oscar Vermeulen, we can all still (sort of) play with a PDP-1. Vermeulen has built a replica of this computer called the PiDP-1. On the inside, it may be all Raspberry Pi and emulation, but the blinkenlights and switches on the case will make you feel like you are playing Spacewar! between classes at MIT in the early 1960s.

The PiDP-1 case is not, as you probably expect, 3D-printed. Rather, custom PCBs were produced, then soldered together. This gave the machine a more authentic look than could have been achieved with plastic parts.

On the inside of the case, there is a lot less going on than there is inside the real deal. The replica is powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. Aside from that, little more than a few 7400-series logic chips, some diodes, and a bunch of LEDS and switches is required for the build. The Raspberry Pi runs a custom emulator that does not mimic the PDP-1 at the logic level, as is common for emulators, but instead at the circuit level. This emulator was written in C, and was ported from a VHDL design. By designing the emulator to function at such a low level, users can get the full experience, and really hack away at this machine.

With the PiDP-1, you can play the first video game ever created, and use the world’s first digital text editor. How’s that for diving into computer history? The replica is still under development, but if you would like to get a better idea about what made the PDP-1 tick, you can check out the emulator source code today.

If you want to dive deeper into the history of computing, check out the PiDP-10, a replica of — you guessed it — the PDP-10.