PDP-11 wireless internet

by david 30. March 2011 19:34

To get my PDP-11 on the internet without buying more stuff, I decided to connect my WiFly board to it.  This will allow me to send commands out of the second serial line, which will be dealt with by the WiFly and then sent over the internet.  It means that my PDP will have wireless internet access.  I have knocked up a simple breadboard experiment:

WiFly breadboard for the PDP-11

I realised that I can test this without writing any code, through the magic of the PDP-11's diagnostic commands.  I can use the 'wrap' command, which will send anything I type on the keyboard to the WiFly and then echo any responses from the WiFly back to the console.  It means that I can test without worrying over buggy code or problems in the OS.  It works great; here is an example:

Screenshot of a PDP-11 on the web

Now that I have proved the hardware works together, I can write some C code to do the same and I should have some sort of internet access.  Umm, I wonder how many text-only websites still exist...

About the author

David

I'm a C# developer having worked with .Net since it was in beta.  Before that I mainly worked in C and C++.  I have been developing commercial software for more than 20 years.  I also mess around with microprocesors, but that's just for fun.  I live near Cambridge, England and at the moment I'm contracted to one of the departments at Cambridge University.

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