Lyle Bickley explains the PDP-1 (and we play the original Spacewar!)

you know everything about our 1401 but next to us is another awesome machine the pdp-1 that maintained by another team so I don't know so much about it but Lyle hiding somewhere is the master of the PDP one good morning Lyle good morning work right and so you have been restoring this thing active before the 1401 right so that's what that started yes before we didn't read the label on my shirt here I'll actually tell you the day's PDP one was built by Kathleen a digital flip the corporation which we definitely called Dec right and it's PDP wants their first machine ever that's right b1 was the first computer but they didn't start with computers they made logic modules and the logic modules were and the boards and flip-flops and they sold them as individual products the engineers index said hey we built module forgive those computer and the management and their venture capital people say don't do computers it's not a good idea and so when they built the computer they called it not a computer the PDP is a program data processor not a computer well and they used the modules that they manufacture to make the computer and once again to date was about it today the date of design was 1959 bender Lee was the chief engineer who designed it he designed the whole computer in three months so same time as the 1401 actually is a little bit too later very similar timeframe to the 1401 but a very different orientation with 1401 was designed by IBM as a business machine that was going to replace their unit record equipment yeah he cannot multiply or divide to save its life right it's not very fast okay this machine was designed as a scientific machine so this was an 18-bit word machine probably the most impressive thing on the front of the PDP one is full panel right which has lots of lines for those of us who level computers that we call the blinking lights machines because they we have the ability to enter programs into the front panel and we can look and see what's going on matter of fact the cool thing about the lights on the PDP one is almost every flip-flop in the machine is Zweifel light and here we have a paper tape rear and have a paper tape punch so this is a paper tape that can have very interesting paper tapes matter of fact they use fan fold paper tape instead of rolls paper tape it's ten characters to the inch on a tape so it's not very dense yeah alright can we turn it on sure little buttons blinkin lied yeah all right okay so can we make it would oh so we already have floated in my software of complicity oh because its core a different lab session so yes we actually have all the demonstrations loaded finishing ahead of time so that when we do demonstrations oh that's cheating yeah you're going to go to one for you wonderful blow the program yeah yeah III don't want the cheat here I want a little space for it now so what will those space for and one way just at that point right okay thing about that machines are the best programming on them were written by those smarts MIT students after hours right and one of my favorite is the music program can you run it for us yes course so everything comes from the machine itself right no that's right actually if you look at the music is different with these four program flags one two three and four and the program could turn them on and on okay from so look what the software does is turn each of these one off at the appropriate time and wires each of the wives the builders women oil is imperial and yoga speakers hidden somewhere I think there is there's an ample speakers next one we turn with dim delight out because we're going to finally eat a beautiful lighter clothes effector murder or whatever that is graphics monitor and it is the snowflakes sites as a moment so let's get to the snowflake purpose we go [Music] [Music] and seeing that they one of the students at MIT research find a body broke this [Music] well it was video and it has happened on the alto is that no we were looking at an unknown cartridge indicate a hello this is my cartridge how loudly right oh we love that that will keep a republic that's awesome when did the monitoring itself is awesome how large is it seems odd it's a likely ninja - okay and there is a loop a resolution is the resolution of 1024 by 1024 that's why so Europe and in 1959 the motivation Alex just crazy and down here this blinky lights for the XY coordinates that's right so this is for electronic light pen as the lightness chance only enough use the fiber optics shiho cause more detail with that later and then it has its full of electronics it has this we have the fact hundreds of the mental logic for the digital to analog circuits and then the power supply's minds are looking at right now and that one whether they're to restore it was the most difficult part of restoration was a very it has this weird foster with with the short short time scale which is white and long time scale which is that yes which is yellow like a radar screen it is a radar so so you're absolutely right on and that is this is a p7 phosphor which means that the the initial electron beam makes it go blue white and then it has this yellow-green persistence that stays later I think we in later in named them peace who are never gay trying to get value I can't eat already you can see it here really important space more that's that's why it looks like a radar screen it is really there [Laughter] and this is Brittany from all that's cool and it has interesting characteristic is it's three dots would all have a relationship with each other and that relationship starts out pretty stable and as time goes on the dots get bored more unstable or the relationship gets unstable and so finally it just breaks down right here at point stages well that's become a chaotic behavior isn't that a wonderful chaotic behavior and then you're reconstituted to to Fosters yes you can you can play very clearly where the the piece of it persistence comes in and you can also keep the square within around yes Jen you can and so most of those programs came from the mi the one that was a solid energy all the eyes that was part of the deal that donated really want MIT all right but it gave it they gave it a mighty it one psychedelic on me and that's cool yes it makes so many weird pattern and it just keeps changing over time yes you a bunch of smart people computer and what comes out is getting weirder and weirder yeah it is very weird yeah well let me tell you when we first got finished the bugging of the PDP one and got the model 30 running the team could sit and watch something like this for an hour I'm so excited I'm tempted to run the one hour video now the other thing was it didn't a typewriter which was piece of software allowed you through online debugging it was the first box is bollocks debugger and it was called EDG so this is a dynamic debugger that's very similar to the stuff you would do actually on Linux okay it was the grandfather the great great great great grandfather's of gdb in Linux okay episode so slash means dump out a memory location location and then you could change memory and look at memory and so forth and the woods you teletypewriter is not totally happy creature appeared mrs. white so happy tried to do two characters at once Oh like like this human Oh careers that's nothing there you [Music] [Music] so basically we're debugging language the next one is one of the most amazing of all its spacebar or from our very own as Steve Russell and actually we even have the source code of space quark [Music] modify force ehm so Steve kept working on it there is no assembly instruction by instruction is a very efficient programming this is all space wires of all is for K all guys this is how everything should be programmed Phillips to the Microsoft here that's right all right actually overflow the receptacle but well we've learned that it doesn't start sizes like this travel with your hand by the way experienced operator here all right 4k to the machine or K and up they go is space were cool it's really the first interactive graphics game on a digital computer members right and it should be one and then you guys have been focus we can play it all right let's run fire hi Percy oh you having a load of fun with 1950 nice computers so I should we go to our meeting so I thought Robert Capa okay okay all cool because I have the ESD login screen yeah much more become stuff oh okay so after the show oh so you two rockets with different shades they're two different shape that's okay so I get this going any expecting button there and the threat with me haha nice they like you know even graphics at great yes well is using every every local birth of computer powers of the the PDP one has to do this all the problems that come son I will too you it's just hard when they were able to get that what wealthy this actually fits in porking the chorus here we yes yeah is about amazing yeah we should work it we should have modern programmer time on this and then I would need my 15 gig or that are targeted for wishing things are duck off a new British combat hey guys oops possible it was a subjective wife it's all you got me again so I did I think it was upside in the analysis [Music] all right like this if I can do now there you go oh god you're good yeah you did oh I have this is quite a bit this is a little bit more okay okay there will be parts wiring in the team time I see you taking fire for some Sun and you start cause I don't know it's like that's wrong ah this is good keep that what it is great what will I find really amazing part is that why I mentor high school kids and college kids offering here in the playstation or and even though they have Playstation or than they have xbox then we'll play from our and then you're talking and I got you oh wow what the power wire that is pretty impressive look at that [Music] all hand ye right that's great better not making mistake in the thing well they did make this negative one of the things that we did in the restoration by the way was that two of his Joe Frederick and myself checked every connection in the machine with large magnifying glass by hand every one of these connections there were four bad connections polishing and we don't know whether they were there from the factory but it was built and they are always bad solder joints uh-huh what whether it happened because you know the machine got moved how goes the West Coast so we'll never know why they were the wires were you know broken loose this is the other side of the machine where we will see the cars right that's right so the first thing you'll notice is the meter my favorite to hear your favorite mater that says how many hours of machine has been running okay two hundred twenty seven three seventy six point five so twenty seven thousand three hundred and seventy six inches date of birth so just he's exertion then that opens up you can elevate that all of the glove and then who haha and then inside we have the logic for the memory and then the actual core planes are here as it a memory itself that's the memory itself there's three banks of four kill words of memory and these are the sense amps with a memory and then a bunch of input output modules well nicely done actually was he wide open the next one over sure this is the bargaining supply for the machine okay talking about morrow that's why you have the big voltmeter on it yeah we have we have ability to change whole digital things okay and then on the inside this is the main brains of the machine the logic is its own blood I throw billions who can't correct such odds better Kendrew their morale though they clean actually yes all ones that have tags on the MER ones that we have repaired the modules and they've they had bugs so that how many cars did you find the machine not very many we close you can see there's there's only what three here in this particular Bank or four okay there is where fact cards those are those were all bad guards clean machine kind trying to get the light been going and the pointing device that you can put on the screen and it has a photomultiplier tube in it that will capture the light and that's the middle of the screen and I guess by timing it they know where you point it you made something happen yeah it just says find it found it yeah yeah it means file yes I got that so that's a diagnostic for the Pens of Diagnostics like that and does it find it and can you make it to work again yes now you can look over here that's what the pen actually sets of a pen actual that's me more exact ooh it sure is with seasonal pixels coming yes ah all right I said so it's a photomultiplier array because no is a lingual is a single one it's a single one and so what happens is it displays a point Owen times the other one is slime right it's all time based basically so what one point those past the defender right oh I got something so you can try to draw something to market once again [Music] Pingu Wow there you go drawing on the computer screen in 1959 [Laughter] it's actually pretty darn good we ain't invented anything spectacular thanks lies you're welcome

Channel: CuriousMarc

Views: 369,640

Keywords: PDP-1, DEC, Digital Equipment Corp, Spacewar, Computer History Museum, CHM, CuriousMarc, Lyle Bickley, Vintage Computing, Restoration, Computer Generated Music

Id: 1EWQYAfuMYw

Length: 22min 23sec (1343 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Silenc1o]

Was the CRT display only used for graphics? Could it be used as text editor?

[u/Svardskampe]

Is it possible or are there replicas out there to build yourself?

[u/[deleted]]

Holy crap, and here for whatever reason, even with tutorial websites, and tips from other Reddit Orson on various subreddits, I can't even learn how to initiate the first line of modern code. I swear it is some hard memory block.

[u/Abalamahalamatandra]

Saw this same demo, and played Spacewar, back in 2006 when I stayed over in CA working on a project for Cisco. Glad to see it's still going strong!

Sadly I had a Cingular 8525 Windows CE phone and didn't get video this good - mine's like 384x250 encoded in 3gp.

[u/Lichtenstein_USA]

I just started Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Thanks for the video. It's really awesome to see the PDP-1 in action!

[u/boxerhenry]

Has anyone been there? I'm planning on making the trip and just wondering how much is there to see. I'm sure I would be there from open to close if I went.

[u/[deleted]]

I love that giant radar tube display! It makes me want to find a big electrostatic tube without a graticle for XY game stuff.

[u/FozzTexx]

When DEC was just making logic modules, what were they for, and who was buying them?

[u/tahuna]

Great video! I remember playing Spacewar at the Stanford student union in the late 70s. That version was coin operated, one to four players. I think it was on a later PDP machine - maybe a PDP-8? - but not sure.