PDP-8.co.uk » PDP-8/E

PDP-8’s for sale

Toby Russell — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 08:39:08 +0000

I’ve decided to sell of a few PDP-8’s as the hoard is getting rather large at the moment and so I’m prepared to part with the following:

PDP-8/M, 8KW core, M8655 serial UART, very clean machine in working order
PDP-8/E, 4KW core, M8650 UART, requires a full rebuild
PDP-8/A, 16KW core, extended memory, serial, paper tape drive and controller (non DEC). Very clean and in working order
RX8E + RX01 drives
PC8E + PC04 paper tape
DECmate III
WP78 (aka a VT78)

Email offers to toby@pdp11.co.uk . Machines are located in UK

PDP-8/E Documentation

Toby Russell — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:46:07 +0000

The following documentation is available as PDFs for the PDP-8/E (source Bitsavers)

DEC-8E-HMM3A-C-D_MaintVol3.pdf	04-Jul-2002 02:11	26M	-
DEC-8E-HR1C-D_8eMaint_Feb73.pdf	14-Oct-2003 23:39	13M	-
DEC-8E-OCASA-B-D_CAPS8_UG.pdf	03-Jul-2003 01:14	9.6M	-
PDP-8E_ECO_LOG_Dec74.pdf	31-Dec-2008 21:36	41M	-
PDP-8E_IPB_Feb74.pdf	21-Nov-2007 19:01	826K	Illustrated parts breakdown
PDP8E_MaintCourseHandouts.pdf	-

Videos: Musical PDP-8s

Toby Russell — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:29:12 +0000

Here are a collection of You Tube videos featuring PDP-8s playing music:

Click here to view the embedded video.

New Arrival – PDP-8/E

Toby Russell — Thu, 06 May 2010 20:05:49 +0000

A rather nice new arrival for my collection is a PDP-8/E. The machine is in 3 H960 racks and has a pair of RK05 drives and a pair of Magtape drives (with pertec interfaces). The 8/E has an expansion box giving a total of 40 slots. The machine has 12KWof memory, 3 x serial ports and a posibus interface. Alas there were no disk packs with the RK05s although I do have one 16 sector pack (unique to PDP-8s)

The machine was owned by a local company who had it in the basement of their country house and they were the owners from new. Removal required us to get the machine up a very steep and narrow staircase and so we had to dismantle the machine considerably in order to get it out. Careful notes and pictures were taken to aid in reassembly.

The machine is going to get pride of place in my office alongside my PDP-11/70 and PDP-8/Ms.

New Haul: PDP-8/L and PDP-8/E

Toby Russell — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:42:48 +0000

A couple of new machines have joined my stable, a very clean PDP-8/L and another PDP-8/E.

The /L is complete with the (somewhat important) exception of its core stack which has been lost at some point. If anyone has or knows the whereabouts of a spare stack (I believe they were common to the /I and PDP-12), please let me know. If I can’t find one I will have to resort to fabricating an alternative using NVRAM chips,although I doubt this will be trivial.

The /E is generally clean although its plexy is pretty scrappy. I quite like the dog eared look and so I will leave it this way. The console itself is missing a couple of keys although I have replacements for these. The machine came with no cards, but I have spare CPU sets and so I’m only left needing to find memory which should be achievable.