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digital equipment corporation · maynard, massachusetts
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MARCH/RESISTORS straight 8 at VCF East 10 (2015)

The retro computer hobbyist group MARCH hosted the Vintage Computer Festival East 2015. In the 60's and 70's a New Jersey high school computer club called the RESISTORS used several computers. One of them was the original model of DEC PDP-8. They used it from 1969 to early 70's. That computer was donated to the MARCH museum in 2008. It needed significant restoration which is discussed here.

I didn't have much time to prepare demos so used a block letter paper tape punch program and luner lander game running in the FOCAL language. It takes the computer 13 minutes to load FOCAL and another 3 minutes to load the game. When loading from a Teletype you have to have patience. The reader on the Teletype wasn't 100% reliable so I actually loaded from a modern computer.

The following picture links also have descriptions of what is shown in the pictures.

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Computer in use by RESISTORS ( 50K)
Talk ( 64K)
Exhibit ( 67K)  Toggle in ( 69K)  Results ( 65K)  Punching ( 65K)

YouTube video of PDP-8 ceremony

Information on Claude Kagan who mentored the group for much of its existence.

Other sites with pictures of the event.
Kyle Owen Starts with more PDP-8 pictures
CommodoreZ on this machine CommodoreZ VCF
Herb Johnson
Bill Degnan
Mike Loewen
dmemphis

Paper tape text punch program
ASR-33 Teletype information,



Feel free to contact me, David Gesswein djg@pdp8online.com with any questions, comments on the web site, or if you have related equipment, documentation, software etc. you are willing to part with.  I am interested in anything PDP-8 related, computers, peripherals used with them, DEC or third party, or documentation. 

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