PDP8 meets USB

The first PDP minicomputer was built by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1960. DEC produced several different types of PDP computers, each with different price and performance parameters. The PDP8 computer was the PDP computer with the lowest price. This was the main reason that in 1973 the PDP8 was the best selling computer worldwide. The original PDP8 computer incorporated a number of different components. In 1976 Intersil developed a chipset that was intended to build more compact PDP8 computers. The Intersil chipset consists of a processor (IM6100), I/O extension device (IM6101) and UART (IM6402). Since there are a lot of PDP8 legacy programs available on paper and magnetic tapes and not that many operational PDP8 machines left, the PDP8 project was initiated. The Intersil chipset is used together with a 80C32 microcomputer in a single board device. The PDP8 device enables the usage of a real PDP8 computer as in the days around 1970, including native I/O connectivity. In addition, the PDP8 device is controlled by a host CE-MS-2004-01 computer. Original PDP8 peripherals such as teleprinters can be connected to the PDP8 device. In this way original PDP8 programs stored on paper or magnetic tapes can be loaded and executed into the PDP8 device. The 80C32 has control over the memory and the system state of the PDP8 processor. The 80C32 communicates with the host computer via USB connection. The USB connection is implemented by the PDIUSB12 controller from Philips. The whole PDP8 device is under control of a dedicated application running on a Microsoft Windows host computer. A command/response interface between the host and the PDP8 device was developed for this purpose and implemented. This thesis will describe the development process and the design of the PDP8 device and the device software