Setup the PiDP-10

Setting up the Environment

In order to run this program, you need a working PDP-10 simulator (or, if you are a very lucky person,the real thing). You can either use the PiDP-10 kit, or a Raspberry Pi 5 to run it on. The PiDP-10 can be run on any Raspberry 5 computer, even without the front panel, but having the front panel is fancier. You can also run simh on a PC, but that would only be half the fun.

The PiDP-10 should be booted into ITS, as this is the OS, this project is running against. Now the only thing you need to do, is copy the source code files into the file system of your PiDP-10. You can do this by using the mlftp tool, installed on the machine your simulator runs on. You clone the repository and run the following commands from the command line:

/opt/pidp10/bin/mlftp -w ITS "SUDOKU 1 JALI;" ./src/sudoku.s
/opt/pidp10/bin/mlftp -w ITS "PUZZLE 1 JALI;" ./src/puzzle_1.sudoku

This will copy the source code file, and the example puzzle file onto the PiDP-10. Remember to change the directory name in the ITS path form JALI to the directory you want to copy to.

You can now edit both files in EMACS on the PiDP-10. However, if you prefer to edit your code in a somewhat more modern environment (your favourite IDE, for example), consider installing the git-monitor on your PiDP-10's host system. The monitor is a service written in bash, that will clone your project repositories and then monitor a given branch for new commits. On new commits it pulls them, and runs the script .git-monitor_after.sh, which in turn, contains the upload commands for ITS. This way, you can automatically update your source code in ITS, even when you are working on a modern machine.

Building and running

Log into ITS with your developers user name by typing USERNAME$U (where $ is the ESC-Key), If you are a luser: Type :LOGIN USERNAME and swap USERNAME for your actual username. Confirm with Enter.

Now you can build the sudoku solver by invoking MIDAS in DDT:

:MIDAS TS SUDOKU_SUDOKU

This will instruct MIDAS to create a relocatable binary (TS) from the latest version of the SUDOKU file, and store it in a file named TS SUDOKU in the current directory. If this succeded, listing the files with :LISTF (or CTRL+F, if you're not a turist), should look something like this:

KA    JALI
FREE BLOCKS #2=154 #3=169 #0=156 #1=171
  1  PUZZL1  SUDOKU 1 ! 9/21/2025 22:02:04
  3  SUDOKU  1      1 ! 9/21/2025 22:02:02
  1  TS      SUDOKU 1 ! 9/21/2025 23:25:09

To invoke the solver run it with:

:SUDOKU PUZZLE 1

This will pass the file PUZZLE 1 to the program, and start solving it.

The result will be printed on the screen (once the project is finished).