Classic Computer Replicas

Summary

These replicas cover the major steps in ‘interactive computing’ from 1945 to 1975,through the product line of DEC Digital Equipment Corporation emerged from Project Whirlwind and MIT. For 30 years, it was the undisputed trailblazer of interactive computing. The strand of computing that led to Windows, Unix, Linux, Android, and microcontrollers in everything. The replicas contain the work of many people, collecting documentation, recovering ancient software, developing emulators. That makes it possible now to make replicas with a realistic 'back in the day' user experience. In other words, although we make these replicas, there is a huge community that we built upon and have to give credit to. Our goal is to make these replicas affordable and pretty enough to find a place in the living room, so as to spread the capsules far & wide :-) TLDR? See this Youtube movie from RetroBytes about DEC history - and our PiDP-11 (thank you!) Youtube: Animated Blinkenlights Collection The replicas and their place in the evolutionary tree of computing The chart below is incomplete and oversimplified! It serves only to quickly put our replicas in their historical context. So. Whirlwind begat the PDP-1, which spawned three very different computer types. The minimalist PDP-8 gave birth to embedded and personal computing leading up to MS-DOS. The PDP-11 was where unix grew up, spawning workstations and later, anything to do with Linux, Macs, Android. But less well-known is that the developers of its RSX-11 OS were called in by Microsoft to develop Windows NT, a complete break with the MS-DOS past of personal computers. You can see the roots in RSX-11. Meanwhile, the glorious, super-powerful PDP-10 architecture went the way of the Dodo. But that is only true for its type of hardware. Its legacy in computer culture (hacker culture, Open Source) and countless ground-breaking computer science concepts is huge, felt to this day. So yes, the above is an oversimplification. But gives a quick pi...