PDP-8 builds¶

Re-implementing the venerable PDP minicomputers with modern hardware

Git repository: https://git.jeelabs.org/embello/tree/explore/1638-pdp8

Weblog posts¶

The PDP-8, half a century ago – Feb 2016
TFoC – PDP-8 in 256 lines of C – Sep 2016
STM32F103 emulating a PDP-8 – Oct 2016
PDP-8/L & DF32 disk on FPGA – Oct 2016

PDP-8 in a Blue Pill¶

The PDP-8 is a surprisingly simple computer, easily emulated in software as the above weblog posts illustrate. Here is another build, running on the “Blue Pill” (which costs about as much as that coin next to it):

This one is really as basic as it gets. It has the FOCAL language interpreter in flash memory and emulates a single 4 Kword “field” using 8 KB RAM. A USB console driver is included, so it’s all plug-and-play.

This emulator is written in Forth, which allows for very concise coding. Here is the implementation of 6 of the 8 opcodes in a PDP-8, as well as the main instruction fetch/decode/execute handler:

 : op0 ( u -- ) addr m@  10000 or  ac and ac! ;                   AND
: op1 ( u -- ) addr m@  ac + low13 ac! ;                         TAD
: op2 ( u -- ) addr  dup m@ 1+w  dup rot m!  0= if ++pc then ;   ISZ
: op3 ( u -- ) addr  ac  dup low12  rot m!  clr12 ac! ;          DCA
: op4 ( u -- ) addr  pc over m!  1+w pc! ;                       JMS
: op5 ( u -- ) addr pc!  ;                                       JMP
 op6 and op7 are more involved and omitted here for brevity...
create op-tab ' op0 , ' op1 , ' op2 , ' op3 , ' op4 , ' op5 , ' op6 , ' op7 ,
: cycle ( -- )   execute one instruction
  iena @ 2/ iena !   bit 0 determines whether interrupts are enabled
  pc  dup 1+w pc!  m@
  dup 7 rshift %11100 and  op-tab + @  execute ;

The entire emulator consists of a little over 100 lines of source code and can be found on this Git page. Installation details are in the README.