[cctalk] Re: Diablo series 30 or Dec RK03

On Sun, Jan 8, 2023 at 6:40 AM jos via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: Indeed. I have had a PDP-8/L since I was in High School (eons ago). I have never come up with mass storage for mine and it's long been a goal to be able to do more than paper tape programs on it. Dry so far. Posibus storage devices were, IME, less common than Negibus devices (which would then require a DW08 and by the time you bought all of that, why didn't you get a PDP-8-i in the first place? (especially since you were memory-limited on the -8/L) I do get wanting to max out an 8/L. It was my first and I'd love to get it doing more things, and it's really cool that you can easily see what's happening at the gate level (possible but less convenient with an Omnibus machine), but there's only so much you can do with _any_ 4K PDP-8, and memory expansion boxes for the 8/L may be rarer than Posibus storage devices. It's a lot easier to bring an Omnibus machine up to 32K and there are lots of vintage storage options. Recreating these things with modern components is always a possibility, of course, but I've only ever seen a couple of one-off devices ever come out (like a Posibus DF32D emulator implemented in TTL that happens to need a now-hard-to-find 128Kx16 NVRAM) Personally I'd love to see some Posibus devices get recreated but after this long, I'm totally willing to see if I could get SerialDisk working with an add-on serial port on an -8/L or unexpanded -8/i. My own (perpetual) goal is to run OS/8 on a pre-Omnibus machine. Haven't pulled all the resources together for that yet. -ethan