Ken Thompson's Space Travel running on PDP-7 emulator

larsbrinkhoff · October 5, 2020, 6:10pm

The infamous game that begat Unix has now been made to run on a PDP-7 emulator with support for the Graphic-2 display system.

http://sebras.se/space-travel-2.mp4

EdS · October 5, 2020, 6:26pm

An interesting teaser! I had a search, and didn’t find this particular work but I did find a previous issue thread of yours with several interesting links:

github.com/simh/simh

PDP7: Type 340 support.

simh:master ← larsbrinkhoff:lars/pdp7

opened 09:56AM - 02 Oct 19 UTC

larsbrinkhoff

+360 -8

The PDP-7 simulator should add support for the DEC Type 340 display. It's descr…ibed here: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/graphics/7-13_340_Display_Programming_Manual.pdf http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/graphics/H-340_Type_340_Precision_Incremental_CRT_System_Nov64.pdf A 340 was attach to the Bell Labs' PDP-7. I believe it may have been used for Space Travel. http://www.linfo.org/pdp-7.html The PDP-6 simulator already have support for the 340, but the interfacing is different. @LivingComputerMuseum has a working PDP-7 with a 340 display. CC @philbudne, @kossow, @DoctorWkt, @aap, @SMJ

I’m guessing that GRAPHIC-1, GRAPHIC-2, and Type 340 are related in some way?

And this 1968 classic (The Incredible Machine) was mentioned too:

larsbrinkhoff · October 5, 2020, 7:48pm

It’s being merged to the http://github.com/pdp7-unix repository as we speak.

The Type 340 was DEC’s older display system, popular with the PDP-6. (Also related to the even older Type 30 for the PDP-1.) The GRAPHIC-1 is visible in the video you posted;if you have sharp eyes you can see it’s attached to a PDP-5. The GRAPHIC-2 was the followup, normally used with PDP-7 or 9 computers. I think they were both designed mainly by William Ninke at Bell Labs.