[Lee Adamson] is no complete stranger to traditional computers. He just recently chosen up a Heathkit H11A which, as you may remember, is really a PDP-11 from DEC. Well, technically, it is an LSI-11 however still. like a appropriate LSI-11, the computer utilizes the DEC QBus. Unlike a great deal of computers of its day, the H11 didn’t have a great deal of switches as well as lights, however it did have an outstanding software application library for its day.

[Lee] takes us with a tour of all the different cards inside the thing. It is outstanding when you believe of today’s laptop motherboards that pack method more into a much smaller space. He likewise had to repair the power supply.

We are looking ahead to seeing more videos on this computer. We miss the days that your computer broke down into several boards plugged into a backplane. even though the computer is a Heathkit, the CPU board came from DEC assembled. However, Heathkit had its own boards that you did develop together with things like power supplies.

The power supply needed some care, as you may expect. A diode wasn’t connected properly however it wasn’t remove if it had been damaged in transit or if it had never been installed correctly. Replacing it put the power supply right as well as now he’s prepared to see if the thing will begin up.

There are lots of methods to emulate a PDP-11 on things like Arduinos. If you want to see what assembly language appeared like on this machine, there’s a tutorial.