What are you doing with your PiDP-1

[Angelo Papenhoff/aap]

Now that the first people have gotten their kits, we're really interested in hearing about what your doing with it! Also what troubles you may be running into that we have to fix, or what extra guidance would be helpful.

Cheers,

Angelo

[Bill E]

Nothing, since I don't have mine yet. I have to say, communication about kit shipment has been nonexistent, and emails go unanswered. How many have been shipped?

Bill

[Malcolm Ray]

For what it's worth:

Oscar emailed me on 12 Sep to say that kits were available, and again on 17 Sep to inform me that mine had shipped.

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[Norbert Landsteiner]

Hi all,

I missed the previous messages, because mail forwarding from Gmail didn't work, but I'm catching up and should be able to respond to any questions.

(The workflow for mail forwarding in Gmail seems to be like this: in Gmail go to settings; go to All Settings; navigate to forwarding tab; activate forwarding and enter email address to forward to; save, everything seems fine; go to settings again; go to All Settings; navigate to forwarding tab; there's now a "verify address" button; click; check your email and follow the link, admire the "verified" page; in Gmail go to settings; go to All Settings; navigate to forwarding tab; there is no indication of the forwarding address and forwarding is set to off; activate forwarding again and enter the forwarding address again; save again. – Totally simple and intuitive!)

PDP-1 related things I've been planning to do for quite a while:

1) Maybe a PDP-1 programming guide (as a series of posts on my blog, https://masswerk.at/nowgobang/ )

Please let me know if there's any interest!

In the meantime, the project log for ICSS maybe of interest: https://www.masswerk.at/rc2016/10/

(This was a RetroChallenge project, where the principal idea is to do a retro-computing related project over a month and let other participate in your progress. So the idea of this (b)log was to get you going and let you follow along without any particular knowledge of the PDP-1.)

2) As for actually doing something (prob. in emulation), a single player space game for the PDP-1: a simplified version of https://www.masswerk.at/gravioroids/

This is in essence a crossover of a Spacewar! with multiple gravitational attractors and Computer Space with a flavor of Asteroids sprinkled on, where we don't shoot the asteroids (these are just gravitational objects), but the saucers. Three of the most classic video games in one, what could be better? :-)

(This has a bit of a backstory: when this was new, Lyle Bickley from the CHM asked, if this was PDP-1 code – and I really thought that it should be quite obvious that this couldn't be so. But, thinking about this, I came to the conclusion that it actually may be done: ICSS is running at 60 frames per seconds and a game should be running fluently at anything like 20 fps or better. So, with lookup tables for trigonometry and reducing the amount of dots to display – which is really the major bottleneck for any PDP-1 game –, like drawing only every second dot in a line, it should be possible… Of course, there's no chance of drawing a gravity map and there will be no splash screen, high-score list, and no sound, but the basic game may be done. I'm actually curious about how many simultaneous screen objects may be practically maintained this way. So, challenge accepted – not immediately, but hopefully soon.)

Cheers,

Norbert

[Rolf Peters]

Hello Angelo,

Just finished mine (although I have to build the controllers yet), now I am looking around trying the demo's, figuring out how to operate the PiDP-1 :-)

Regards Rolf

Op donderdag 18 september 2025 om 18:47:23 UTC+2 schreef Angelo Papenhoff/aap:

[John Kennedy]

Blowing minds in my office with my PDP-1 rack!

[Oscar Vermeulen]

Bill,

On Friday, September 19, 2025 at 12:33:58 PM UTC+2 wjegr...@gmail.com wrote:

Nothing, since I don't have mine yet. I have to say, communication about kit shipment has been nonexistent, and emails go unanswered. How many have been shipped?

I think we're at about 65 or so now, Jose is doing five or six a day. Keep in mind, we're a tiny team! But Jose sent out emails to everyone on the wait list, it may be that his emails went into the spam folder?

To make sure,  I've just asked him to contact you & ensure you are on the list!

Kind regards,

Oscar.

[Glenn Babecki]

I thought I got on the PiDP-1 mailing list rather late because I was sort of half following the development newsletter reports indicating "it will be available any day now..." I put my name on the list and Jose confirmed I was on the early-bird list around 6/25. Oscar sent an email on 9/10 asking if I "really wanted one" so I responded indeed. Next thing I knew I got a DHL notice saying it was shipped Friday 9/12 and it was delivered Monday 9/15.

I've inventoried the kit but haven't had a chance to start constructing it yet.  Delivery caught me off guard so I haven't acquired a processor yet, but construction is in the queue.  I'm retired and there still isn't enough time in a day.

Early thoughts on projects include possible mini rack for the frame, out boarding an HDMI LCD display for the Type 30, and perhaps a more ergonomic set of Spacewar controllers.  Then there's all the software fun and frivolity.

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[Bob Darlington]

I'm patient.   If it's a year from now, that's a year more cool stuff and work folks put into it to make it better.   I love building kits but this is one that I'm not super jazzed up about getting early.  It can wait.

-Bob

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[Oscar Vermeulen]

New updates from my side:

I put in a page pointing to Masswerk.at for any deeper knowledge on PDP-1 Display Hacks, and analysis of Spacewar/ICSS. Norbert, is this OK for you?
https://obsolescence.dev/pdp1-democoding-and-gaming.html

Also, a new page to get you going with PDP-1 Lisp:

https://obsolescence.dev/pdp1-lisp-introduction.html

...it includes setup for an AI Lisp tutor for the PDP-1 Lisp. As I am learning PDP-1 Lisp myself. It's surprisingly effective with Claude Code or ChatGPT. Although there is a third file to train on the Lisp 1.5 programmer's manual, ChatGPT only wants to eat two files in the free version. I'll solve that tomorrow.

[John Kennedy]

Excellent - I love LISP. Crazy old language!

[Oscar Vermeulen]

On Sunday, September 21, 2025 at 4:26:04 AM UTC+2 johntk...@gmail.com wrote:

Excellent - I love LISP. Crazy old language!

Up until this morning I had no real plan to delve deeper into Lisp, but the other post of this morning contained a link to an excellent book that makes me change my mind:

 http://www.softwarepreservation.net/projects/LISP/book/III_LispBook_Apr66.pdf, in case you missed it. 

[Norbert Landsteiner]

> Norbert, is this OK for you?

Totally! :-)

[Norbert Landsteiner]

Here's something that may be useful, regarding how to bring any characters onto the display.

This page lists a few early software character rendering routines (code and glyph data, links to the original sources are provided) along with their output:

https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/chargen/

Mind that the character encoding isn't anything like ASCII. Have a look at the glyph definitions and their order.

Best,

Norbert

[Oscar Vermeulen]

On Sunday, September 21, 2025 at 5:01:17 PM UTC+2 n.land...@gmail.com wrote:

This page lists a few early software character rendering routines (code and glyph data, links to the original sources are provided) along with their output:

https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/chargen/

I was just looking at that page this afternoon :-)

There's a surprising lot of information to absorb for the PDP-1. Though a good percentage from .at...

Kind regards,

Oscar.

[Oscar Vermeulen]

Angelo,

How's your Forth coming along? Anything to share yet?

Kind regards,

Oscar.

[Angelo Papenhoff/aap]

I have now written a new assembler that can deal with extended memory. macros are currently handled with m4, but otherwise it should behave quite similar to MACRO already. This allowed me to assemble my forth/lisp system again as i had gone over the first field of memory. the next steps will be debugging the core lisp functionality but i hope to be ready to push something (the assembler and forth+lisp) in a couple of days.

Mind you this isn't very fast code, but i found it immensely educational for myself, and hopefully also for others once i write an article about the implementation.

Cheers, aap

[Oscar Vermeulen]

So... you wrote the Lisp in Forth?!

[Bill E]

How are binaries that are bigger than 4k and need to load into other pages handled? The standard BIN loader doesn't handle those. Was the process to load multiple tapes, one per bank, or is there a loader format around that handles it?

Bill

[Oscar Vermeulen]

Bill,

On Saturday, September 27, 2025 at 1:22:05 PM UTC+2 wjegr...@gmail.com wrote:

How are binaries that are bigger than 4k and need to load into other pages handled? The standard BIN loader doesn't handle those. Was the process to load multiple tapes, one per bank, or is there a loader format around that handles it?

As I understand it, both options existed. It's why some tapes need the Extend bit set to load. Lisp is one.

(If I am wrong, please correct. Learning whilst doing etc)

It's the reason Angelo set off on his macro assembler project, to make >4K binaries comfortably with a cross assembler. Well, he claims that is his reason. I am not sure he needed a reason.

Kind regards,

Oscar.