PDPi-11 - PDP-11 on the Raspberry Pi
PDPi-11 is a software bundle containing a PDP-11 simulator and various operating systems from the hugely popular (in it's time) minicomputer.
I recently read that a nuclear power plant in Canada was planning on keeping their PDP-11 that controls plant robotic systems in service until 2050! With that in mind someone at GE is looking to recruit PDP-11 assembly programmers to maintain their systems[1].
The Raspberry Pi is aimed at getting people closer to the computer, so why no get them closer one of the other most influential systems in computing history.
The PDP-11 simulator comes courtesy of Bob Supnik's SIMH[2][3], a collection of simulators for bygone computing platforms. The aim is to put together pre-built simulator binaries along with config and OS disk images, all wrapped with neat startup scripts to make getting started simple.
Currently the following operating systems are provided with PDPi-11. To start an OS you just need to run the appropriate shell script.
- dosbatch-11 - DOS/Batch-11 V10
- pdp-11-unixv6 - PDP-11 UNIX V6
- pdp-11-unixv7 - PDP-11 UNIX V7
- rt-11-v53 - RT-11 v5.3
- rt-11-v53-ethernet - RT-11 v5.3 with an ethernet card configured
[1] http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-from-GE-Canada