OK, just to be clear again, I don't own this machine. Never have done :-(

I nearly bought it a couple of years ago, and the seller was kind enough to send these excellent pictures. There were a number of other parties interested, and it turned into a bit of 'blind bidding war' - not a very happy situation, clearly you're trusting the seller to be honest and not 'invent' 'bids' to raise the price... I dropped out at about $1200, and I believe the box finally sold for over $1500... pdp-8/S serial number '0' recently (7/2003) sold on ebay for over $3000, so probably $1500 was fair for a common (or not so common!) 8/S... I'm still in the market for an 8/S... offers by email please! :-)

So although my history of this machine didn't have a happy outcome, they're still the best 8/S pictures I've seen, so I decided to make this page.

The pdp-8/S didn't have a happy outcome for DEC either... it was designed as a cheap & cheerful low-end followup to the original, highly successful, pdp-8. The problem was that, to make it cheap, they had to make it bit-serial. The pdp-8 architecture is 12-bit - all operations are performed on 12-bit words. Normally that would mean that the hardware - accumulator etc. - was 12 bits wide. The 8/S however performs its 12 bit operations *one bit at a time* - hence 'bit-serial'. DEC sacrificed 12-bit parallel hardware to make it cheap. As a result it was crushingly slow, and sold very poorly.

Click on the images to see a full-size original (opens in new window)

A proper front panel - almost as complete as the 'straight-8' and 8/I.




I *think* this is a 'tabletop' case, not rackmount




Bus interface cables...




The cover tilts up...




Lots of cards...




...mostly R-series modules, the predecessor of the M-series 'purple handles' used in later DEC equipment




The power supply




Core stack




The other end of the bus cables




Oh and it worked too...!


There aren't many 8/S machines out there...
http://web.archive.org/web/20001004213820/http://www.pdp8.com/8sdesktop.htm John Bradatanu had two excellent pages which are now gone, but...
http://web.archive.org/web/20001023035335/http://www.pdp8.com/8s.htm ...Blessed Be archive.org!!!!
http://www.unusual.on.ca/unusual/ Kevin Stumpf had one...
http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/timeline/1966-2.htm Gordon Bell mentions them...
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/dec-faq/pdp8-models/section-4.html but the FAQ is worth reading.