While I was recently recovering from the Plague know as COVID, I could not get enthusiastic about painting, so I decided to venture into the realm of vintage computing and assembled a replica of a 1970's minicomputer known as a DEC PDP-11. I had bought this kit a few weeks before with the intention of building it latter in the year.
The kit essentially adds a scale replica of the PDP-11's front control panel to a Raspberry PI single board computer which in turn runs an emulation of the PDP-11's operating system.
For a more in depth look, here is a link to the kit creator's website:
https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11
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Opening and first look at the kit
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| Sorting ready for assembly |
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| Stage one completed |
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| Switch bank added |
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Pi board added
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| The finished article |
It took three afternoon's of work to complete the kit, and I am quite happy with the outcome. I only made two mistakes - the white switch was put in wrong and one solder joint (out of 350+ ) was dodgy - but easily found and corrected. I have not done electronic work like this since the early 90's and actually enjoyed a trip back in time to an earlier part of my working life. There are some additions that can be added, and will look at doing that at a latter time.
