Well that was interesting!

[sunnybo...@gmail.com]

I'm resurrecting my glass rack (short rack with glass front) housing my Altairduino, PiDP-11, PiDP-8 and a 9-node Pi cluster.

I got the PiDP-11 working yesterday fairly easily as it has wired ethernet on DHCP, and was pleased to see it fire up to BSD 2.11 as if I never turned it off (some years ago now).

The PiDP-8 was not as easy. The faceplate keeps falling off, which I need to fix, so I took it out of the rack to work on it. I could see it running, but I never cut holes in the wooden case for USB or NIC ports, meaning it must run on WIFI. That' won't work as we changed everything (from dual-port ADSL to fiber) meaning new modem and new WIFI access point.

I pulled the guts from the case and plugged in a network cable, and could see the blinky green light indicating it was running, but it never appeared on the network. Finally I got out my micro HCMI monitor and micro keyboard and plugged them in. 

It was stalled on Raspien  (Jesse) boot. Some disk errors and just sitting there. I guess the SD card got corrupted somehow just sitting there. I tried downloading new Raspien using their installer, but it kept failing on verify. So the SD card was probably toast.

I found another one and was able to doawload and install a newer 64bit (recommended) Raspien and booted that. While downloading I was careful to set the SSID and password, and other options, but once it booted (HDMI screen still attached) it gave me a generic "press next to begin" followed by a full installation process that asked for username, WIFI SSID and so on all over again. Very annoying (yes, I did save my changes in the download)

Once complete I had the desktop, nice and stupid, so had to run 'sudo raspi-config' to turn on SSH logins and VNC. (that stuff should be default, IMO). After that, I needed to install PiDP-8 software again.

I did a quick lookup on PiDP-8 and found this page "https://obsolescence.dev/pidp-8-quick-install.html" and followed the first recommendation (why not - it's the latest!). It downloaded using a thing called 'fossil' from a website called 'tangentsoft.com', showing just how long I've been out of the PiDP-8 loop!!!

I followed directions to build the system and it worked perfectly. As soon as I rebooted the hardware came up and I was able to bring up  the console terminal and use the PiDP-8 as if it hadn't been off for years.

Excellent manual (still), and excellent new distribution. 

Now I  have all my 'Oscar' machines running: PiDP-8, PiDP-11, PiDP-10 and the newest, PiDP-1. Lots of fun to play with them all.

-R

[Obsolescence]

On Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 5:23:16 AM UTC+1 sunnybo...@gmail.com wrote:

The PiDP-8 was not as easy. The faceplate keeps falling off, which I need to fix

I have that! The bamboo case used to friction-fit the faceplate, but after a couple of years the friction was no longer enough. I guess there's an influence of moisture on the bamboo case - or something like that.

Multiple simple solutions:

• Put a sliver of black paper/thin cardboard in the inner ledge of the case, then reseat the faceplate. It's probably enough
• Put some black plastic tape (electrical tape, it will not hurt the paint on the back of the faceplate) on the back of the faceplate, fold it just around the edges

There's other tricks, but these are sufficient from my experience. And keep the faceplate removable.

If you have an older PiDP-8 where the bamboo case did not have a slot in the back already, it is not that hard. Use a ruler with a box cutter knife to cut grooves, then trace the grooves with the box cutter till you go through the back. It is pretty much zero risk and surprisingly low effort. Saying something about the material used in the back, I guess, but oh well.

Kind regards,

Oscar.