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Restored PDP-1 Demonstration

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Uploaded by on Jan 21, 2007

A restored PDP-1 playing music and running Spacewar!, the first computer game. It's running at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, and they do demos at 2pm and 2:45pm the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of each month.

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Uploader Comments (toastyken)

  • That is one groovy, neato looking monitor they are using. Could be a good idea to use styling like that for a modern day HD TV or something.

  • @MattTheSaiyan It's an oscilloscope! :D Notably, rather than redrawing the screen line by line like a CRT, it draws individual points and has a limited number of about 200 points it can draw each second. That's why the graphics are wireframe, to limit the number of total points it needs to draw!

Top Comments

  • Nice music remembering that its from paper tape.. and that was one long tape for 30 seconds of music.

  • Steve Russel was the man!

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All Comments (28)

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  • wow, it was huge! 

  • @Vyggy, yes I realize that and I'm therefore extra impressed.

  • They seem to be always sold out of these at JB Hi-Fi. Do Walmart have them?

    I think maybe they're waiting for the new model with 3D support.

  • wherer can I get one?

  • @REDDF1VE and @bphutchins, the white haired guy in the beginning of the video is not Steve Russell, though he often does demonstrations on the PDP-1. The person in this video is Peter Samson, a contemporary of Steve's at the hacker lab at MIT, and the author of the music playing program heard in the video, among his many other achievements. In regards to yongwoogoon's comment about the book Hacker's, Peter Samson is mentioned in the opening sentence of the book!

  • Just demod this to my son, who is intrigued how the UI and Hardware has moved on and now appreciates his Nintendo WII

  • @REDDF1VE yeah the white haired guy at the beginning is him

  • @DevSodDribble

    You're correct in saying that the porn industry does make shitloads by investing in technologies like VHS, DVDs and The Internet. But it doesnt drive the need for the introduction of new computer hardware as all pre-rendered videos cant show off new features like 3D acceleration, HDR, and realtime physics which video games can,

  • @Superfreaxx Incorrect. You're forgetting the REAL 'consumer demand' here, which is, of course, porn. It was the same with VHS 25-30 years ago.

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