Replicas - was Re: *** Ideas needed for developing interactive

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Ethan Dicks wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 09:28:25PM -0700, vrs wrote:
> > > An SMT transistorized machine would be an interesting project, but hell to
> > > debug I would imagine.
> >
> > One could perhaps build it out of modules -- make SMT versions of Rxxx
> > modules, etc., then use those to build up the CPU.  Then one could debug at
> > the module level before tackling the whole thing.
>
> One could, but the interconnection thing would be a killer - I suppose the
> cheapest way to do it might be a "fatherboard" arrangement with a nest of
> pins for the backplane, and pin receptacles on the modules (though the
> more traditional pins-on-the-module-and-sockets-on-the-motherboard would
> be about the same cost, probably).  In the case of a PDP-8 design, there
> are several busses that might have to be run, but you could sort-of cheat
> and aggregate the registers (like is done with the 6 x M220 cards in an
> -8/i or -8/L) to group things together.  I would expect that in addition
> to the registers themselves (AC, MD, MA...) whatever memory there was would
> fit nicely in the same area.

BTW, this would probably make for an award winning exhibit at the VCF ;)

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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