{"id":13792,"date":"2017-02-22T17:35:46","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T22:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=13792"},"modified":"2017-02-22T17:35:46","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T22:35:46","slug":"the-pocket-dec-pretender-pdp-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/22\/the-pocket-dec-pretender-pdp-zero\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pocket DEC Pretender (PDP) Zero"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
PDP (Pocket DEC Pretender) Zero: lettering came out a bit more, um,\u00c2\u00a0 artisanal than I’d hoped \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Digital (aka DEC) used to make some very solid minicomputers back when a minicomputer was fridge-sized and people were still building nuclear power stations to be controlled by them. The Raspberry Pi Zero<\/a> is a very<\/em> mini computer indeed, and in USB gadget mode<\/a> running SimH<\/a> it makes a nice little emulation platform.<\/p>\n

The case is from Thingiverse: One Piece Raspberry Pi Zero + Camera Case (with GPIO) by Superrei<\/a>, but with the DEC PDP logo<\/a> in relief on the top.<\/p>\n

DEC minis were famous for their arrays of blinkenlights<\/a>. The Pocket DEC Pretender, not so much: it has one tiny green light that flickers a bit now and again:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
PDP (Pocket DEC Pretender) Zero: case open, very few blinkenlights<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But it’s a genuinely useful (for my<\/em> values of useful) emulation platform. Here it is pretending to be a PDP-8<\/a>, running BASIC under OS-8:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
PDP (Pocket DEC Pretender) Zero: PDP-8 BASIC!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(background in case pictures woven in Toronto by Deftly Weft<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Digital (aka DEC) used to make some very solid minicomputers back when a minicomputer was fridge-sized and people were still building nuclear power stations to be controlled by them. The Raspberry Pi Zero is a very mini computer indeed, and in USB gadget mode running SimH it makes a nice little emulation platform. The case […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[2963,3037,2510,2556],"class_list":["post-13792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-suck","tag-3dprinter","tag-dec","tag-raspberrypi","tag-retrocomputing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-3As","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13792"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13799,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13792\/revisions\/13799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}