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Lyle Bickley explains the PDP-1 (and we play the original Spacewar!)

CuriousMarc · demo · Watch on YouTube

History of computingGame history & retro gaming

What it is

Lyle Bickley of the PDP-1 restoration team tours the 1959 DEC machine at the Computer History Museum and plays the original Spacewar! He covers its graphics display and the MIT student programs written for it.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Linked in Spacewar and vintage computing threads as a charming demo on real hardware.

  • 2 people recommended it
  • 2 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2018, last 2020

What HN commenters said

  1. “His videos are surprisingly addictive;”

    Demos running on original hardware from a restoration channel.

    BuildTheRobots, 2020-01 · Recommendation · in “Snowflake: Graphical SFTP client and terminal emulator with helpful utilities”

  2. “it's quite an impressive machine.”

    Interview with a PDP-1 restorer and original Spacewar demo.

    chaos_a, 2020-12 · Recommendation · in “The original "Spacewar!" running on a virtual DEC PDP-1”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: pdp-1, spacewar, computer history museum, dec, restoration

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