🚀 go-pugleaf

Back when I was a college student I had a job programming on a
PDP-8/e.  Although it only had 4K, it did have an oscilloscope
controller which was normally used to control a pen plotter along with
a homebrew board to raise and lower the pen.  I hacked up FOCAL-8 so
that it had instructions to plot to a particular point and control the
pen.  I put a fair amount of effort into it; but to my knowledge the
software was never actually used for real work.  Probably, because the
PDP-10 in the computer center got a real plotter with software that
could only be fantasized about on a PDP-8...

During the summer, I was able to borrow a 'scope from the Mechanical
Engineering Department and hook it up in place of the plotter.  I had
gotten a listing of the old PDP-8 Spacewar program from DECUS and had
hacked it up so it would run on the 8/e.  Among other things, there
were different I/O instructions for the 'scope and the timings had to
be changed.  The resulting game was a good deal of fun, and my friends
and I would while away many hours playing it.  We had an idea of
buying a PDP-8/a and setting it up with a quarter-eater in a bar, but
lack of funds prevented the project from getting anywhere.  This was
the mid-70's, before the video game craze...

The other fun thing I did was music taking advantage of RFI generated
by the core.  What I wrote was an interpreted system which took a
pitch number and a duration.  It would use the pitch number to index
into a table of addresses which it would indirect jump to.  Most of
memory consisted of no-op's followed by a jump back to the
interpreter.  The result was some nice square waves, albeit a bit out
of tune in the higher notes...