Current Status
Only three PDP-1 computers are still known to exist, and all three are in the collection of the Computer History Museum (CHM). One is the prototype formerly used at MIT, and the other two are production PDP-1C machines. One of the latter, serial number 55 (the last PDP-1 made) has been restored to working order, is on exhibit, and is demonstrated on two Saturdays every month. The restoration is described on a special web page of the Computer History Museum. The demonstrations include:
- the game Spacewar!
- graphics demonstrations such as Snowflake
- playing music
At the Computer History Museum TX-0 alumni reunion in 1984, Gordon Bell said DEC's products developed directly from the TX-2, the successor to the TX-0 which had been developed at what Bell thought was a bargain price at the time, about US$3 million. At the same meeting, Jack Dennis said Ben Gurley's design for the PDP-1 was influenced by his work on the TX-0 display.
At the museum's PDP-1 restoration celebration in May 2006, Alan Kotok said his Macintosh PowerBook G4 laptop was 10,000 times faster, came with 100,000 times the RAM and 500,000 times the storage, was 1/2000 the size, and cost 1/100 as much.
Software simulations of the PDP-1 exist in SIMH and MESS, and binary image paper tapes of the software exist in the bitsavers.org archives.
Read more about this topic: PDP-1
Famous quotes containing the words current and/or status:
“A reaction: a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom.... Goodbye to all that.”
—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)