CUBIX/6809 updates

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that woodelf may have mentioned these words:
>Roger Merchberger wrote:
>
>>
>>Firstly, I'd like to mention that I've always wanted to build my own 
>>homebrew 6809 system... altho I've been thinking of designing my own buss 
>>system (around 80 pins or so) so other CPUs could be used if desired. I 
>>was thinking of a multi-board system with a 6-7 socket backplane. I want 
>>it to be educational to others (read: see-thru Lucite case & lotsa 
>>Blinkenlights! ;-) at the same time that I learn from it, too.
>The XT connectors can be got cheap.

Same problem as the S100, tho - how do you chisel out an XT board edge 
connector at home...

>  For a 8 bit CPU how many pins do you really need?

40 pins, but I didn't want to limit the design solely for the 6809. I might 
want to build a 68K board in the future, and for that I'd need more pins.

>Now a 4 MHZ 6809 ( that are not made ) would be just about right.

But a 4Mhz Hitachi 6309 *was* made, and clock for clock it was even faster 
than the 6809, had a hardware divide and some 32-bit operations. Schweet!

>I think protype PCB's are still better as when you add up the price for 
>WireWrap sockets
>I think works out the same ballpark figure. I think the time doing a 
>PCB  is longer but
>less hassle since mistakes in wire wrapping are very hard to find.

Due to size restrictions, I wasn't going to wirewrap (except maybe one 
prototype board, but even that would be temporary until I made a PCB) - not 
enough board density for a "small" computer.

>>Them's fightin' words. 64K w/OS-9 got me thru High school & my first year 
>>of college, before I got my CoCo3 & 128K (later to 512K) but I still had 
>>a maximum 64K code space - and that kept me working until the mid-90's. 
>>Other than running (crawling) Autocad, my '386 was the 'toy' and my CoCo 
>>was the workhorse. Once I got an EISA 486-66 server from my (then 
>>current) employer, did I consider the CoCo my secondary machine.
>The crappy hardware on the COCO keeps it a toy.

Crappy hardware? I just pulled out my durned-near-20 year old CoCo3 (which 
at the time was about 35 degrees F) plugged 'er in (yea, it was stupid, but 
I was in a hurry) and it sparked right up. I posit that machines today are 
the toys, and the machines of yore were the serious business tools.

>>A few of those microcontrollers have 128K of flash on 'em now.
>>I want my CoCo on a chip! ;-)
>I want a Gimix!  ( I think that is how it was spelled )

Yup, and I drooled over the Gimix ads in Hot CoCo and Rainbow as well. Boy 
howdy would I love to have one of those now.

>Just where are you that it is 30 below?

Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on the border of Ontario, Canada.

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | A new truth in advertising slogan
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy...
zmerch at 30below.com          |                         ...in oxymoron!"