I still truly love these machines.

There's something fundamentally minimal and perfect

about the design of the PDP-8. As you'll see below and on the other pages here, I
recently assembled three contemporary PDP-8 kits created by Bob Armstrong. Then I re-
learned the delightful PDP-8 assembly language so that I could create some front panel
“Toggle Toys” to give these new PDP-8's something fun to do.

Note that even an ancient PDP-8 can do useful work and

be a lot of fun today. It is not just a curio even in the
21st century. See the page “What a PDP-8 can do today”
to get a sense for all the fun you can have with a PDP-8.

I, like many others who are about my age and who have fond memories of their first
encounters with classic DEC machines, have become a collector of classic DEC PDP-8 and
PDP-11 computers and peripherals. My collection is continually growing. As of the end of
2009, I own several PDP-8/e's, PDP-8/l's, a PDP-8/m and a PDP-8/f as well as several
PDP-11/05's and 11/35's along with some VAX-11's, various peripherals and plenty of
original manuals and related documentation. While most people aren't lucky enough to
own a real PDP-8 (and they are pretty large, noisy and power hungry) Bob's beautiful
PDP-8 kits make owning an actual working PDP-8 possible! They are able to run the PDP-
8's standard DEC operating system, OS/8 and all of its many languages, programs and
utilities.

As an assembly language programmer, the PDP-11 and VAX-11 instruction sets are
especially appealing since DEC's engineers deliberately designed those machines to be
pleasant to program in assembly language. Unlike today's systems, where the
assumption is that very little will be written by humans in the machine's assembly
language, back then the machines were programmed in their native assembly language
more often than not.

I cannot spare the time to play with them right now. But I want to rescue any machines
I find today so that they don't wind up in someone's dumpster. What a tragedy that
would be! And I do plan to spend many enjoyable years in the future refurbishing,
restoring, and resurrecting them all — if I ever find the time to retire!