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.
There's a couple eyebrow raising things about this post.. like the fact that there's nothing but vague details in text and one photo with an AI prompt like alt-text. I think they're just trying to get clicks for that banner ad.
While probably it's legit because I've seen Dave discussing the process on the YT channel (which I no longer watch) he unfortunately does have form https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39813625)
Having TMOG on a .org when it sells commercial licences doesn't sit well with me given the history.
I'm a little confused by your comment.. especially considering the fact that you edited it and changed the link from and old comment thread from 2024 to whatever this dead post is from 2012. What does having form mean? Who is Dave?
Sadly, the site does seem AI-flavoured to a rather off-putting extent.
And, as you say, the details are so vague - it's exactly what you might expect if an LLM wrote them based on reading a spec sheet rather than any practical experience.
In particular, connecting that DEQNA to a modern network must have been a huge challenge all in itself and I'd have expected there to be a series of blog posts about just that. Maybe it's legit (and I'd love more detail if it is), but right now the presentation screams "thinly disguised ad".
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.
Please do not treat it as a challenge box; I can restore from tape, but that ruins it for everyone else.
Unfortunately, for a disturbing percentage of the Internet, ruining things for everyone else is the goal. I'd turn off telnet.
Why is the domain `pdp1173.com` when the machine is a PDP 11/83 ?
There's a couple eyebrow raising things about this post.. like the fact that there's nothing but vague details in text and one photo with an AI prompt like alt-text. I think they're just trying to get clicks for that banner ad.
While probably it's legit because I've seen Dave discussing the process on the YT channel (which I no longer watch) he unfortunately does have form https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39813625)
Having TMOG on a .org when it sells commercial licences doesn't sit well with me given the history.
I'm a little confused by your comment.. especially considering the fact that you edited it and changed the link from and old comment thread from 2024 to whatever this dead post is from 2012. What does having form mean? Who is Dave?
Sorry, lost the last digit, fixed now. This restored PDP-11/83 project is Dave Plummer's
Oh, yeah - this popped up on HN yesterday too and also met with scepticism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49772362
Oh well, so this PDP restoration probably isn't real. Disappointing.
Sadly, the site does seem AI-flavoured to a rather off-putting extent.
And, as you say, the details are so vague - it's exactly what you might expect if an LLM wrote them based on reading a spec sheet rather than any practical experience.
In particular, connecting that DEQNA to a modern network must have been a huge challenge all in itself and I'd have expected there to be a series of blog posts about just that. Maybe it's legit (and I'd love more detail if it is), but right now the presentation screams "thinly disguised ad".
as of 12 noon CST, it pings but does not telnet.
Thanks for keeping the spirit of the old internet alive :)
I hope you won’t have to restore it from tape!
I love it. My PDP-11 has some fault that keeps it blowing fuses. Emulators don’t feel the same. Real hardware doing the work, well done
I posted this to twostopbits. Community over there is small but devoted to such willful acts of restoration
https://twostopbits.com/item?id=9970
A PDP-11 serving adverts for an AI-written site in 2026 was not on my bingo card. Imagine being brought back from the dead for that.