FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers

[Chuck Guzis]

On 11/12/2005 at 3:49 PM der Mouse wrote:

>> With no BIOS and no schematics, how on earth is it useful doing
>> anything with them other than scrapping them?
>
>The same could be said of much of the hardware which is salvaged and
>then made workable again.  As for "how", well, schematics can be traced
>from boards - I've done it in simple cases and others here have done it
>in much more complex cases - and, that aside, just because you don't
>have suitable ROMs doesn't mean nobody does.  (Perhaps nobody in fact
>does, and what you've now said makes that seem more plausible, but
>based on what you said before, I saw no reason to think that.)

Okay, I'll make a deal you can't resist.  Anybody wants these things, all
they have to do is come up with a BIOS PROM for these things and pay
shipping.  The manufacturer was Tripas Technologies.

Bet there are no takers.  Tripas was one of those
flash-in-the-pan-horribly-underfunded Silicon Valley startups.  The Valley
was full of them in the 80's.  Firms like these helped keep firms like
Halted in business.

>Sure, but to dissect it for parts before even checking if anyone else
>has any use for it?  That's something I regularly dealers reviled for
>doing.

I offered it for free, along with a 14" 40 MB HPIB hard disk that went with
it.  A couple of tickles, but no serious interest.  Too bad--I've got a
fairly good selection of engineering documentation as well as loads of
software for it.  Revile me if you want, but I feel no moral imperative to
be a warehouse for unwanted obsolete stuff.

The trouble is that when you get down to the PC era, there were so many
brands that flickered in and out of existence that there's just no point to
accumulating a lot of stuff that pretty much all did the same thing.  I can
reel off names like Preis and MAD that almost no one remembers for their
unremarkable products.

Cheers,
Chuck