Lyle Bickley explains the PDP-1 (and we play the original Spacewar!)

CuriousMarcRecommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 months, 2018–2020

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demo · general · evergreen · 2018–2020 on HN

Lyle Bickley of the PDP-1 restoration team tours the 1959 DEC machine at the Computer History Museum and plays the original Spacewar! He covers its graphics display and the MIT student programs written for it.

Linked in Spacewar and vintage computing threads as a charming demo on real hardware.

History of computing Game history & retro gaming #pdp-1 #spacewar #computerhistorymuseum #dec

4 comments from Hacker News

@chaos_a2020-12 · in “The original "Spacewar!" running on a virtual DEC PDP-1”

Here's the same one on youtube with an interview with one of the people who restored it, it's quite an impressive machine. ▶ this video

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@BuildTheRobots2020-01 · in “Snowflake: Graphical SFTP client and terminal emulator with helpful utilities”

CuriousMark has a PDP11 video that has some of these demos running on the original hardware: ▶ this video His videos are surprisingly addictive; they've restored an Apollo guidance computer, Altos and tonnes of other ancient kit.

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@nezgar2020-10 · in “A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)”

Check out this demonstration of "Space War" on a PDP-1 using a radar long-persistance CRT: ▶ this video

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@masswerk2018-02 · in “Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums (1972)”

See also this video shot at the CHM (by Marc Verdiell), "Lyle Bickley explains the PDP-1 (and we play the original Spacewar!)": ▶ this video

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