Subject: I got a pdp-8

From: [email-masked] (micah)
Date: 29 Jun 1994 16:20:00 GMT

Ok, I got a pdp-8 from my dads office.  What is the thing good for?  
I'm not even sure if I would now how to fire the thing up.  Please 
E-mail any tips or advice on what to do with it.

Thanks

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From: [email-masked] (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879)
Date: 29 Jun 1994 22:11:28 GMT

My X-windows emulator for the PDP-8/E now supports the RX01.  I'll E-mail
the thing to anyone who wants to try it.

It doesn't support maintenance mode.  Other than that, it supports
everything I tried on it -- my real purpose was to have enough support
for the RX01 that I could write a reasonable exerciser program for my
real RX01 at home, test it on the emulator, and then launch it on the
real thing to see how my real hardware works (currently, ready to test
but untested).

Spec's:  Requires X11R3 or above, with Xt toolkit.  There are known bugs
that make it bring down the Xterm from which it was launched when it
terminates on some systems; X-windows is like that.  It's tested on an
IBM RT, and before I send it out, I'll do a run on an RS 6000 and a Sun
SPARC processor.

The only significant peripherals supported are the console TTY, PC01
reader/punch, and RX01.  No EAE yet, but it has a memory manager.

Until I get a bootable RX01 based system, all you get with the thing is
bare hardware, including a simulated RX01 diskette full of gibberish
left there by my test program.

I'll also let anyone have the test program source itself, if that's of
any use.  It makes for good blinking lights -- it uses a random number
generator to do a seek test on both drives of the disk, so it's
pleasantly eratic in operation.