About us
The background story: how retrocomputers come from the rainforest
Well, from very close to the rainforest. It sounds nice. And this really is where the PiDP-10 simulation had its Blinkenlights programmed! That was a good time; and this is a bit of a personal story for us.
The beginning
In 2015, Oscar made a one-off replica of a PDP-8, as the Real Thing was above budget. Soon though, 50 of the kits were planned for fellow hobbyists. When Steve Gibson mentioned the PiDP-8 on his Security Now show, things suddenly took off. There were lots of people with this interest. Apparently. And Oscar ended up making kits every month at the kitchen table. In 2018, the next replica, a PiDP-11, was done with the help of Joerg. Things got out of hand after Youtube movies from RetroCombs and Computerphile, and thousands of kits were made at the kitchen table over the years. Well, by now the entire house had turned into aMore and more, this became a collaborative effort with many people contributing. Warren taught simple LEDs to glow like 1960s front panel lightbulbs, Bill did a complete reconstruction from historical sources of the PDP-8's operating system, Ian brought back spacewar on the PDP-8 through a modified radar tube simulator, Johnny brought his modernised RSX-11 OS - many dozens of people brought these little replicas to life with such, sometimes surprisingly big projects.
The bigger ideas
When plans came up with Lars, Angelo, Richard and Guy to make 3 more replica's, our collective perception of them also started to change. More ambitious goals bubbled up: to 'keep computer history alive'; make the machines complete enough to be complete 'computer history capsules'.Never mind our excessively conceptual thinking, but it was clear that all this could not be done by way of a kitchen table operation.
The solution
Otto got involved in 2022, a friend of Oscar's university days, also getting a bad case of computer history virus. So the two of them decided to focus on getting some sort of a 'production facility' going, in preparation for the new replicas. Rather than buying a larger kitchen table, it really was time to look for a proper little micro-factory. Enough storage to hold all the parts, to pack the kits together and also now, to assemble kits. For those people who like historical computers, but do not necessarily also love the soldering aspect.Jose turned out to be the missing link. He had the operational skills and experience, and was willing to build up and run this micro-factory. For our projects, and independent of that, perhaps later on for others as well.
So now, there is a Chiriqui Electronic Design Studio in Panama. CEDS for short. Why Panama? That's where Jose and Otto live. And to try to rationalise this, because of the Panama Canal (lots of logistics infrastructure), it is also not an entirely irrational place to be. Pallets of stuff arrive regularly from China (and the UK, US, Switzerland, the Netherlands, we get our replica parts from a strange mix of specialist companies). The high shipping cost of parts had always been the big issue for Oscar's kitchen table operation in Switzerland, where he is. That's not to say the choice for Panama is exactly the most rational - but for all three of us, Panama happens to be where our heart is. (We should mention that our replicas ship out of Florida, because shipping boxes out of Panama proved too slow and costly. We use a professional fulfillment center there, like web shops do).
So that is how CEDS got started in 2022, and how it got its name (the letters CEDS also just happen to reshuffle into DECS ;-). On to new replica projects, now we finally have the capacity for it, we can finally do whatever we want! Besides the PDP replicas, we plan to build 3 replicas of early IBM mainframes, replicate one or two iconic terminals and whatever else comes along in that weird but wonderful group of people we've met along the way. If you have an idea or a good design, let us know. Exactly because this is a hobby business, getting a kit out will be surprisingly easier than doing it all by yourself, now we have the whole thing set up.
People - Obsolescence Guaranteed
Oscar Vermeulen, oscar.vermeulen (at)at hotmail (dot) com
Otto Oosterwijk, otto (at)seagullcoveresort (dot) com
At the Vintage Computer Festival Berlin, October 2023 with the new prototypes of the PiDP-10 and PiDP-1:
People - CEDS
Jose Leon, j.leon (at) ceds (dot) dev - standing with Oscar scratching his head
Ivan Poveda, i.poveda (at) ceds (dot) dev
At the storage area - Ivan does not much like his image from up close on the Internet...
