Exploring the PDP-11/70 console panel

Many people have written about the iconic PDP-11/70 front panel.

misspiggy detail

There are many of these in collections, usually saved when machines were upgraded and later dismantled.

Projects like "BlinkenBone" or "PiDP11" try to emulate this front panel, connecting panel hardware to a modified "SimH" emulator.

 

However, beeing 100% faithful requires to explore behaviour of a real existing PDP-11/70 in a lot of special situations.

These tests where performed at the Living Computer Museum in Februar 2018. The PDP-11/70 is  "Miss Piggy", a historic Microsoft server.

misspiggy

Oscar (Vermeulen, right) and me (Joerg, left) were allowed to exercise "Miss Piggy" for hours, patiently remounting or test disk and booting the crashed machine.

oscar joerg

We were alone in the museum on a monday, after the 1st "Vintage Computer Festival North-West" took place on the week-end before.

Despite LCM has tons of interesting things to show, our fellow friends (Angelo, Jack and Josh) got bored after a few hours waiting for us.

angelo jack josh waiting

 

 Links to test procedures and videos on following page.