PiDP-8/I Software

Using Our Binary OS Images
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Imaging the SD Card

The Raspberry Pi OS OS images you can download from the PiDP-8/I development site are based on the official Raspberry Pi OS images, so the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s installation guide applies just as well to our PiDP-8/I software images. I particularly like using the Etcher method, even on a POSIX system, since it can write the SD card directly from the Zip file, without requiring that you unpack the *.img file within first.

As of the 2021.02.14 release, you will need to use a 8 GB or larger SD card. Prior releases allowed use of 2 GB cards, but you can't even do an "apt upgrade" on such a card after flashing it with a fresh copy of the current "Lite" OS image. We jumped from 2 GB to 8 not only because we don't happen to have any 4 GB cards laying around, but because the Raspberry Pi Foundation docs recommend 8 GB for this release.

The contents of the Zip file are:

File Name Description
README.md this file
pidp8i-*.img the OS image, based on Raspberry Pi OS Stretch Lite
MANIFEST.txt SHA-256 hash and file size for the OS image file

Logging In

Aside from having the PiDP-8/I software installed and running, the primary difference between our OS images those provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation is the default user name and password:

You will be made to change that password on first login.

Remember, the S in IoT stands for Security. If we want security, we have to see to it ourselves!

If you do not want your PiDP-8/I to be secure, see our "How to Run a Naked PiDP-8/I" guide.

Enabling the SSH Server

The OpenSSH server is enabled and running by default on our OS images, but for security reasons, our build process wipes out the generated SSH host keys, else they’d be the same on everyone's PiDP-8/I, which would be a massive security hole. Unfortunately, the sshd service on Raspberry Pi OS is not smart enough to regenerate these keys if they are missing on boot, so you need to do this once by hand:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server

You should be able to log in via SSH immediately after that command completes.

We can’t do this for you automatically because our software doesn’t run as root, so our startup script cannot make system-wide changes. This is properly one of the tasks for you, the system’s administrator.