The PDP-1 Lab for Hackers

A page introducing Bill Ezell's pidp1-mods. Bill spent a year on building everything needed for the 'ultimate hacker's PDP-1'. That meant building all sorts of peripherals into the PDP-1 simulator. Developing a modern, gcc based development toolchain to suit modern-day hackers. And allowing people to build their own hardware for the P(i)DP-1. Be that virtual hardware in simulation, or real, modern day Maker hardware through an I2C port.

Then, staying within the hardware limits of this 1960 machine, he ported first Adventure from the PDP-10, then, the Z Machine. So you can now play Beyond Zork on a VT-100 terminal, through a faithfully simulated 64-serial port interface (Type 630) on a PDP-1, using drum storage to hold the data.

It might be esoteric, but if you care for ancient computer history, this is an amazing playground.

Note - no need to own the PiDP-1 hardware. This will run on any Linux with a virtual PDP-1 front panel included.

Thanks, Bill!

It's bizarre that a 1960 computer can run a port of the Z machine, and run most of the Infocom adventures. All on primitive drum storage.