Hacker News: davepl

New comment by davepl in "A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix"

davepl — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:36:32 +0000

Because it started as a 15Mhz 11/73 but I later upgraded it to an 18MHz 11/83 CPU. And now it's a Mentec M1, but it's still an "83 class" machine. That's my thinking, anyway.

New comment by davepl in "A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix"

davepl — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:35:40 +0000

Every pixel is where I put it, so that's all that matters to me. If it's ugly, it's intentionally so. AI had no input into designing the visuals or UX.

New comment by davepl in "A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix"

davepl — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:34:50 +0000

"Probably isn't real". Interesting theory.

New comment by davepl in "A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix"

davepl — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:34:20 +0000

FWIW, .com was taken so I registered .org, and it's only used for the free version. The PRO version lives at tmog.store, which should be pretty plain.

New comment by davepl in "A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix"

davepl — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:33:29 +0000

There's an 11/70 panel at the top of the rack; it's emulated (but a real panel). Below that are the two chassis of 11/83, which has a panel of its own from Joerg Hoppe.

New comment by davepl in "A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix"

davepl — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:32:33 +0000

It is though. Dig deeper.

A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix

davepl — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 15:45:06 +0000

The box is a restored Q-bus PDP-11/83 named minerva: Mentec M11 CPU, two chassis tied with M9404/M9405, RQDX3, 2xEmulex UC07, KDA50, RLV12, DEQNA, M3104. Storage is RA82 + dual RA92, MFM boot/swap, dual RL02, RX50s, and a TKZ50. OS is 2.11BSD.

The live panel is top. /cgi-bin/webtop is the raw snapshot.

A 16-bit httpd will not survive the front page, so Varnish/Caddy/Cloudflare cache the HTML and a 5-second webtop sample. Origin is still the 11 itself, and it handles all of the webtop and visitor count requests.

Telnet exists (pdp1173.com, guest) but it is a 40-year-old UNIX with no modern security story. Please do not treat it as a challenge box; I can restore from tape, but that ruins it for everyone else.

Happy to answer Mentec, MSCP, Q-bus, or 2.11BSD questions.

To get BSD running on the Mentec, I had to customize the BSD kernel to use FPSIM, as the Mentec supports IEEE floating-point and NOT the DEC formats.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49788773

Points: 89

# Comments: 38

Test my live Tempest AI Metrics Dashboard on the web

davepl — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 02:13:32 +0000

Article URL: http://davepl.dyns.org:8765/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47030124

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by davepl in "The Secret History of Windows Task Manager from Retired Microsoft Engineer"

davepl — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 15:13:03 +0000

No, I'm slowly scanning the room for John Connor.

New comment by davepl in "The Secret History of Windows Task Manager from Retired Microsoft Engineer"

davepl — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 15:12:43 +0000

Oh yeah, that's a tour de force of UI design! Geebuk.

New comment by davepl in "The Secret History of Windows Task Manager from Retired Microsoft Engineer"

davepl — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 15:10:28 +0000

Ah a little knowledge is an entertaining thing. What does the V in VTBL stand for, I wonder? There's your hint.

New comment by davepl in "The Secret History of Windows Task Manager from Retired Microsoft Engineer"

davepl — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 15:09:32 +0000

Not really... since they nuked Movie Maker, I moved to Final Cut on the Mac!