PDP‑11/Hack de Luxe

Tired of attempts to create a PDP‑11/Hack on breadboard to test some ideas I had to enhance the CPU board of my modular PDP‑11/Hack computer I decided to build a small single board computer using the DCJ11.

Initially I called the project PDP‑11/Hack de Luxe but now its called DCJ11 Single Board Computer or short DCJ11 SBC to avoid confusion with my other PDP‑11/Hack project.

Since almost half a year I’m struggling with enhancing the CPU board of my PDP‑11/Hack. The idea was to increase the maximum Memory to the full 4Mbyte and at the same time have some minimal on-board IO. A first idea was a complete failure and then I got interrupted by other events and so the project was postponed. When I resumed the project I thought perhaps I should build some test environment to make sure that this time the on-board IO will work. At first I tried to recreate my PDP‑11/Hack on breadboards, but either I was not patient, did make too many errors or the breadboards deteriorated over time and the connections were no longer reliable.

To make the long story short, I then decided to design a PCB for the purpose of verifying my design ideas. And thus I came up with the idea of a Eurocard sized Single Board Computer using a DCJ11 as CPU.

Read more about this project called DCJ11 SBC. There you will find all information about the project, the KiCad files and building instructions so you can build your own copy of the DCJ11 SBC. The base system is very simple and requires only decent soldering skills and uses standard TTL logic. The system comes with an expansion slot. I will publish my onw expansion projects, but you can of course design your own extensions.