The Tremendous Dimension Fortress (SDF), a bunch of pc lovers and professionals with a watch on traditional UNIX techniques, has put a brand new system on-line for public use — although provided that the {hardware}, a Methods Ideas SC-40, dates again to the early 90s the phrase “new” could also be misapplied.
Based by Stewart Nelson and Mike Levitt, Methods Ideas made a reputation for itself creating equipment for the Digital PDP-10 household of mainframe computer systems earlier than branching out into constructing its personal PDP-10 suitable clone techniques. Whereas its techniques have been quicker and extra energy-efficient than Digital’s personal, missed deadlines plagued the challenge — and the discharge in 1993 of the SC-40, designed to be as much as eight instances quicker than DEC’s KL-10, can be the final within the vary.
The SC mainframe household is perhaps gone, however it’s not forgotten. The SDF group has obtained its palms on an unique unit, lovingly restored and now out there for public use — accessible to anybody with an SSH shopper and an web connection, in an announcement dropped at our consideration by Adafruit.
A part of the group’s mission to supply remotely-accessible computing techniques as a “non-commercial INTERNET,” capitalization the SDF’s unique, the “new” SC-40 joins a spread of DEC Alpha and AMD Opteron techniques operating NetBSD, TOPS-20, and Symbolics GENERA already put in and maintained by the group — and on which anybody is invited to log in and experiment with classic computing.
The system is accessible to all, utilizing telnet or SSH connectivity and a easy textual content console. (📷: SDF)
The group has an extended historical past of working with PDP-10 and suitable techniques, stretching again to efforts in 1994 to convey a DECSYSTEM-2065 not too long ago retired by the Texas Lady’s College again on-line. With unique {hardware} typically exhausting to seek out and even more durable to deal with, the main target was totally on software program emulation utilizing extra trendy {hardware} to convey TOPS-10 and the newer TOPS-20 to a contemporary viewers — however now the SC-40 supplies a fully-functional period-appropriate {hardware} platform, dwelling alongside the SDF’s current XKL Toad-2, a single-chip reimplementation of the DECSYSTEM-20.
These taken with attempting out the SC-40 can merely SSH to [email protected] and kind “login new new” to enter the system and obtain fundamental directions on its use; a spread of software program has been pre-installed, with extra — together with video games — to observe. Extra details about the SDF, in the meantime, is accessible on the group’s web site.
