Newsletter, PiDP parts tester, Kicads

[Oscar Vermeulen]

All,

With apologies for not being online as much as I should:

the latest 'Newsletter' with a PiDP-1 section - including an intro to Bill Ezell's earth-shattering innovations, here:

https://obsolescence.dev/obsolescence-newsletter-may-2026.html

Kits now come with a little tester board (always remove the Pi before using it!), which can be helpful when a LED or switch does not work after building the kit. It's been there for a while, but I forgot to link to it :-)

https://obsolescence.dev/pidp-parts-tester.html

Also, the above page contains links to the Kicad project files. Links to them sloshed around the Obsolescence site and the Google Groups, now they are all in one place.

As always, feedback is very welcome. I might be a bit slow to respond, but that is not due to a lack of interest in feedback!

Kind regards,

Oscar.

[Bill E]

Thanks for the praise!

To everyone else, I need feedback! Even if you aren't going to run this, take a look at the 5,000+ lines of documentation to see what it's all about and let me know if there are errors. If you run the mod version or use the assembler, give be bug reports. There's 25,000+ lines of code and docs I've churned out, I'm sure there are issues.

Thanks, Bill

[sunnyboy010101]

I have some feedback but mostly a question. I built my PiDP-1 rack kit back last December, and the install of PiDP-1 "official" software shows January 2026 as the download date for the directory /opt/pidp1. It works really well with no issues at all.

I read the newsletter and immediately downloaded the PiDP-1 Mods software from github as per the directions given in the newsletter. The download date (i.e. creation of directory /opt/pidp1-mods was April 21, 2026. I followed the directions in the newsletter and ran /opt/pidp1-mods/install/install.sh and answered yes "y" to every question as suggested. I the rebooted the Raspberry Pi (Pi 5, SSD on bottom hat, Raspbien latest 64bit version as of Jan 2026).

I wanted to run the FunStuff program, but there were no .rim files. I had a look and read the readme.me, then ran "make" to make the FunStuff files into .rim files. I loaded "programselector.rim" into the tape (F7) and pressed readin. It read the tape, then... nothing. Lights stopped blinking. Nothing on the screen. It would not respond to the on/off hardware switch and seemed locked up, so I stopped and restarted the simulation using the desktop icons.

I then tried to read my favorite "demo" program, "munch.rim" from the main tape directory. Again, it queued the tape in the window, and read the tape when I clicked "read in". (all other switches were off on the hardware). It read the tape, then locked up again just as before - no response to on/off switch... nothing.

I went back to /opt/pidp1 and ran install/install.sh and answered "y" to restore the "standard" PiDP-1 system and verified that everything works as expected. Overall I tried three times running /opt/pidp1-mods/install/install.sh and always got the locked up system as soon as I loaded a tape, followed by running /opt/pidp1/install/install.sh to restore the original system.

I assume I've done something wrong, but I don't know what.

Is there a possibility that the particular version I downloaded from github on April 21 had some issue that has since been fixed? I'm tempted to just "rm -r" /opt/pidp1-mods and re-clone it with something today, but I would love to know if I was doing something wrong with the mods first.

Anyway, end of initial test feedback for now.

-R

[Bill E]

The symptoms match what I would expect if you picked up my repo in the last day or so with the broken checkin. The particular one you're seeing is in the high speed channel code. Do a pull and rebuild, that should fix it. I hope. I'm running the latest now without issue. If you want to reclone, that would be safest, though.

And yes, Oscar's docs are a work in progress, he'll be refining them. None of the demo code is assembled to save space, so you need to do that as you found.

Bill

[sunnyboy010101]

Thanks Bill! I just now removed pidp1-mods directory and recloned the github repository. I ran 'make' on the FunStuff/Demos directory, then re-ran install.sh and rebooted.

I normally keep my physical HDMI screen off, so turned that off (requires stopping and restarting the simulator) and then tried loading 'programSelector.rim'. This time it all worked, although I could not make an actual selection with my mouse (right-clicking). I then loaded munch.rim and set my switches for the pattern I like, and after loading the tape it came up perfectly!

Thanks!

-R

[sunnyboy010101]

One other thing Bill...

I notice the 'blinky lights' behaviour is much improved compared to the standard software. I was wondering because the "munch.rim" program causes most of the main lights to stay on at a very fast blink. However, with your new version the blink rate, while still very fast, has more modulation and seems to my eye to be more in line with what I see on the other PiDP kits. I know you mentioned this to me some time ago when you were first building your mods, but this is the first I've come to use them. Nice work!

-R