test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by brian＠quarterbyte.com

We have a thread for sightings of vintage computers in film and TV right? I just spotted a nice IBM 360 installation in "The Girl Most Likely To...", a 1973 black comedy. Selectric console terminal, lots of 3420 tapes drives and a sorter painted blue. It's the sorter that has a tiny (and technically inaccurate, but who cares) role in the plot. It's a pretty fun movie, written by Joan Rivers, and there are a whole bunch of recognizable TV character actors of the era in there. Got it on NetFlix.

17 years, 11 months

Serial-to-Ethernet Adaptor

by crc120＠comcast.net

I came across an application note and software on the Luminary Micro site <http://www.luminarymicro.com/> implementing subject device. The application note is the last one on the App Note page and the Software Update page references the app note. You can get a device with ethernet and three UARTS for a bit over US$ 10 in singles - ARM Cortex processor. CRC

17 years, 11 months

Capacitor values for original PET power supply?

by dm561＠torfree.net

----------Original Message: Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 00:21:23 -0700 From: Josh Dersch <derschjo at msu.edu> Subject: Capacitor values for original PET power supply? Picked up an original PET 2001-8 awhile back that's been heavily (and I do mean heavily) modified at various points in its history by someone with very odd design aesthetics. (See pic at http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/hackedpet.jpg & http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/hackedpet2.jpg). Various parts were hacked in and hot glued (!!) in place or just left to dangle. When I got it everything was loose inside. There's an Expandamem board and some homebrew job with some eproms and some hackery connected to the internal cassette port. There are various switches on the front and back that do who knows what. The keyboard & tape drive have been replaced with a different keyboard, alas. (I'll leave finding those two items for a later date...) And the power supply's capacitor has been replaced with some huge Sprague monstrosity larger than a pop can. Haven't even attempted to power it up since the power supply wiring's all hanging loose and taped together, but I'm afraid of that capacitor and I'd rather just return this thing to more or less "original spec" and remove all of this extra stuff. Anyone know what the original power supply capacitor was for this thing? I've found parts lists & schematics for the main PCB, video & voltage regulator but none of them appear to list this. (I'd also be interested in knowing the transformer specs & wiring, since I'm probably going to have to rewire that...) Thanks, Josh ----------Reply: Well, if it were mine I'd clean it up and figure out what's what and how to use it instead of returning it to the boring "original" spec. Don't know why you need to replace the cap or rewire the transformer, but FWIW the original cap is 23,000 at 15; presumably it was increased to deal with the increased current required by the extra boards. Don't know specs for the transformer but it and the wiring look stock as far as I can see aside >from being heavier than the original so I don't see why you'd need the specs. FWIW, there should be 5 secondary terminals: 7 & 8 are the AC supply for the monitor, 5 is ground, and 4 & 6 are the two ends of the 8-0-8 secondary. The EPROMS may be interesting; there were a number of monitors, utilities etc. supplied in EPROMs, and some disk/tape software packages also used EPROMs for extra memory and copy protection; at least some of those switches will be for selecting the EPROM to use. Dump 'em if you can; they may be rare/useful. If the keyboard isn't an obvious hack, i.e. if it fits the case and has the PET graphics characters, it may be original; only the early models had the chiclet keys and integrated tape drive. mike m

17 years, 11 months

Free CBM PET 8296 + dual floppy drives, Wilts., England

by lproven＠gmail.com

A friend of mine - freewheelin at cix dot co dot uk - wants to dispose of an old PET: [[ I've got a Commodore PET 8296 (http://tinyurl.com/3totud) and separate dual disk drive (model 4040 - http://tinyurl.com/3k87vr), both non-working, which are gathering dust in a corner of my office - if he wants them. P&P might be rather enormous though, unless there's someone heading from Wiltshire (near Stonehenge) to Shropshire who can take them on-board? ]] Anyone interested? Free for the collection. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508

17 years, 11 months

Rad 2.0

by magsales＠nwlink.com

I am interested in your old RAD 2.0?s

17 years, 11 months

Pinout Wiki

by technobug＠comcast.net

Just came across an interesting nascent site that should be of interest to the group: "AllPinouts is a Web-based free content project to collect and list all know pinouts." found at <http://www.allpinouts.org >. CRC

17 years, 11 months

RT-11 V4 & V5 manuals online?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

> Have they all been scanned and are on line? Not scanned, but I have the original DEC-Document sources (like LaTeX) and resulting postscripts and PDF's for RT-11 V5.6 and V5.7 up, e.g.: http://www.trailing-edge.com/~shoppa/rt56manuals/s1523_pro.pdf I'm similarly mystified by the previous post to this list looking for scanned VMS documentation... the original PDF's (not scanned but again through the DEC-Document->PS->PDF chain) are out there on the web already. Tim.

17 years, 11 months

Capacitor values for original PET power supply?

by derschjo＠msu.edu

Picked up an original PET 2001-8 awhile back that's been heavily (and I do mean heavily) modified at various points in its history by someone with very odd design aesthetics. (See pic at http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/hackedpet.jpg & http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/hackedpet2.jpg). Various parts were hacked in and hot glued (!!) in place or just left to dangle. When I got it everything was loose inside. There's an Expandamem board and some homebrew job with some eproms and some hackery connected to the internal cassette port. There are various switches on the front and back that do who knows what. The keyboard & tape drive have been replaced with a different keyboard, alas. (I'll leave finding those two items for a later date...) And the power supply's capacitor has been replaced with some huge Sprague monstrosity larger than a pop can. Haven't even attempted to power it up since the power supply wiring's all hanging loose and taped together, but I'm afraid of that capacitor and I'd rather just return this thing to more or less "original spec" and remove all of this extra stuff. Anyone know what the original power supply capacitor was for this thing? I've found parts lists & schematics for the main PCB, video & voltage regulator but none of them appear to list this. (I'd also be interested in knowing the transformer specs & wiring, since I'm probably going to have to rewire that...) Thanks, Josh

17 years, 11 months

book on PAL/GAL programming?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

Andrew wrote: > I am interested in PAL / GAL programming and would > like to buy a book on the subject. Does anyone have > any recommendation(s)? Alternatively, there may > be websites with PAL / GAL programming how to > guides. Those would be useful > too. I have a rough idea using PALASM but it has been > a long time since I have used anything like it. Since you mentioned it... and since this IS classiccmp... The first version of PALASM I used was back in 1984 or 1985, and it ran on a VAX and a PDP-11. If I recall correctly, it came as Fortran source code and was from MMI, the big seller (at the time) of PAL's. The MMI databooks of the era were very good at convincing old stuck-in-the-mud-types like me that PAL's were a huge improvement over discrete logic, showing how logic equations map into blowing diodes, and blowing diodes in a PAL results in exactly the function you wanted to begin with. If I google for pages with MMI, PALASM, and Fortran, I see several pages that would help you go this route. As a practical matter, for a modern board, you'd probably use gate arrays for all but the most straightforward decoding to do it really modern. Tim.

17 years, 11 months

Emulation vs. "the real thing" was: Re: Minimal CP-M SBC design

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Emulation vs. "the real thing" was: Re: Minimal CP-M SBC design > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 10:00:33 -0700 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >Allison wrote: > >> Where it works, I want to emulate a PDP1, or replace a PDP-11. Where >> it doesn't work so well is when I want to run VMS on a MicroVAX with >> performance in the NVAX realm. > >As you stated, it depends upon what you want to do. > >22Nice was written in response to those, who, back in 1986 still had >x80 CP/M systems and were looking to migrate to the PC. It was the >answer to the question "...But how do I get my old <fill in the >application name> to work>?" The goal was not emulation of a Z80/8080 >per se, but finding a way to make the transition to the MS-DOS world >as seamless as possible. We didn't care about the >Osborne/Kaypro/whatever experience or the CP/M experience, only how >to get people going on a new platform. By and large, it worked >pretty well, with no drivers, TSRs or knowledge about CP/M. You >renamed your .COM files, ran GENCOM on them and you were off and >running. The SUBMIT capability, for example, was deeemd superflous, >as the MS-DOS BAT capability was better in just about every way and >simple enough to adapt to. (The first versions of 22Nice ran on a >Compupro 85/88 S-100 machine, but that's another story). > >22Disk was written solely as a way to get files to 22Nice. We'd >considered just making the package read-only, but "in for a penny, in >for a pound" thinking produced that bit of creeping featurism. > >To a CP/M purist, this approach (not providing an isolated emulated >Z80 that you could load CP/M into) was probably heresy, but it worked >well enough and accomplished the goal. The rise of better PC >software eventually relegated 22Nice to the back burner, as that was >seen as the ultimate objective. Well not a purist. I've been using myz80 since around 94ish on PCs for appliactions coding and other stuff. Sicne then I've added Dave Dunfields Altair/Horizon Em,ulator that has a few things I use. Also 22nice as well. However I didnt' ened it to port old z80 apps to the PC I found enough PC stuff to do the same or better that I didn't need that. >I'd be lost without uC emulators today--they provide a convenient >quick code check without the labor of trying to figure out what the >heck is going on in that little block of plastic. But my reason for >using an emulator there is very different from that of using 22Nice-- >I'm not interested in getting rid of the uC, but getting *to* it. ;) Like Blackfin or PIC. >I'll use an emulator to satisfy my curiosity for hard-to-get old >hardware. I've used the SIMH 1620 emulator to scratch an itch in my >brain about some code I wrote 40+ years ago, but I would never >confuse that with the actual experience of using a 1620 with the >blinkenlights, parity checks, clackety console typewriter and >glacially slow execution. Nor do I have the will or resources to >resurrect or construct my own CADET. Nor do I want one in my office. ;) In somce ases MYz80 is far mroe capable or SIMH or any of the many others as I can besitting anywhere running the sim on a small laptop that I'd have any way rather than dragging my PX8 along as well. >Sometimes, I'll use an emulator to figure out how some old piece of >software worked, such as WPS-I on an old DECStation. The emulator in >this case is better than the real thing, because I can modify the >emulator code to show me what's happening internally. This would be >at least very difficult on the real hardware--even if I really had it >at hand. Yes, it's a debugger and tool. >This gets back to why I questioned the lack of diskette drives on a >"real" Z80 design running CP/M. It seemed to me that if one is after >an "experience" and is willing to go to considerable lengths to get >it, that it should be as accurate and complete as possible. While 3D >computer simulation of skydiving can be made to be very accurate, >there's nothing like jumping out of a real aircraft for realism. >Having noiseless, crashproof RAM-drives just wouldn't do it for me. ;) Having had noisy crash prone drives ( and still having many) if I want to build to explore some part/hack of CP/M it's usually not writing yafd (yet another floppy driver). CF allows me to build and pay attention to other things that might be more hardware and software intensive. Examples over the years is low DC power systems, page mappers and the memory management software. Both hard to do in a sim but the sim can help in creating the code. >It all depends upon what your objective is. It always do. ;) Allison >Cheers, >Chuck

17 years, 11 months

book on PAL/GAL programming?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 13:27:51 +0000 > From: Ethan Dicks > I still build a lot of hobby projects with GALs (like PALs, but > with much more flexible input and output configurations) - I > don't think I've built a Spare Time Gizmos product yet that didn't > have at least one 16V8 or 22V10. Gate Arrays might be handy for > larger projects, but you can still pack a *lot* into a 20 or 24-pin > GAL. If someone were just starting out with GAL/PALs, wouldn't PEEL be the best choice rather than fuse-programmed devices? At least you'd get a second chance if you flubbed your first try--and they're basically the same packaging. Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 11 months

Do you have a Tektronix 4010? Want a screen capture for it?

by legalize＠xmission.com

Hi, While looking at the service manual for the Tektronix 4010/4010-1 and 4014/4014-1 terminals, I came up with an idea for creating a screen capture card for them using the principles from the Tektronix 4631 hard copy unit for the terminals. This would give you the ability to capture a pixel image from the Tektronix terminal's display tube. How many people would be interested in such a project? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 11 months

RT-11 V4 & V5 manuals online?

by brad＠heeltoe.com

Hi I have hard copies of V4 and V5 RT-11 manuals. I'd like to keep the V5 manuals but I'd like to get rid of the V4 manuals. Have they all been scanned and are on line? I looked on manx and bitsavers and I found a few v4 manuals but not everything. Should I figure out what I have which is not on line and scan that? Or am I wasting my time? For instance, I just scanned (as a test of 2 sided) AA-5285F-TC, which is already online, but I can't find AA-K724A-TC (BASIC-11/RT-11 Installation and release notes, for V4 RT-11) so I assume that is not scanned. I just don't want to pitch these if they are not available (which is hard to believe, as I think what I have is very common) -brad

17 years, 11 months

Emulation vs. "the real thing" was: Re: Minimal CP-M SBC design

by cclist＠sydex.com

Allison wrote: > Where it works, I want to emulate a PDP1, or replace a PDP-11. Where > it doesn't work so well is when I want to run VMS on a MicroVAX with > performance in the NVAX realm. As you stated, it depends upon what you want to do. 22Nice was written in response to those, who, back in 1986 still had x80 CP/M systems and were looking to migrate to the PC. It was the answer to the question "...But how do I get my old <fill in the application name> to work>?" The goal was not emulation of a Z80/8080 per se, but finding a way to make the transition to the MS-DOS world as seamless as possible. We didn't care about the Osborne/Kaypro/whatever experience or the CP/M experience, only how to get people going on a new platform. By and large, it worked pretty well, with no drivers, TSRs or knowledge about CP/M. You renamed your .COM files, ran GENCOM on them and you were off and running. The SUBMIT capability, for example, was deeemd superflous, as the MS-DOS BAT capability was better in just about every way and simple enough to adapt to. (The first versions of 22Nice ran on a Compupro 85/88 S-100 machine, but that's another story). 22Disk was written solely as a way to get files to 22Nice. We'd considered just making the package read-only, but "in for a penny, in for a pound" thinking produced that bit of creeping featurism. To a CP/M purist, this approach (not providing an isolated emulated Z80 that you could load CP/M into) was probably heresy, but it worked well enough and accomplished the goal. The rise of better PC software eventually relegated 22Nice to the back burner, as that was seen as the ultimate objective. I'd be lost without uC emulators today--they provide a convenient quick code check without the labor of trying to figure out what the heck is going on in that little block of plastic. But my reason for using an emulator there is very different from that of using 22Nice-- I'm not interested in getting rid of the uC, but getting *to* it. I'll use an emulator to satisfy my curiosity for hard-to-get old hardware. I've used the SIMH 1620 emulator to scratch an itch in my brain about some code I wrote 40+ years ago, but I would never confuse that with the actual experience of using a 1620 with the blinkenlights, parity checks, clackety console typewriter and glacially slow execution. Nor do I have the will or resources to resurrect or construct my own CADET. Nor do I want one in my office. Sometimes, I'll use an emulator to figure out how some old piece of software worked, such as WPS-I on an old DECStation. The emulator in this case is better than the real thing, because I can modify the emulator code to show me what's happening internally. This would be at least very difficult on the real hardware--even if I really had it at hand. This gets back to why I questioned the lack of diskette drives on a "real" Z80 design running CP/M. It seemed to me that if one is after an "experience" and is willing to go to considerable lengths to get it, that it should be as accurate and complete as possible. While 3D computer simulation of skydiving can be made to be very accurate, there's nothing like jumping out of a real aircraft for realism. Having noiseless, crashproof RAM-drives just wouldn't do it for me. It all depends upon what your objective is. Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 11 months

Mac LC3 in Maine/North Carolina

by mtapley＠swri.edu

Mac collectors, I was contacted by Kathy or Rick, who are moving from Maine to North Carolina and would like to find a good home for their Macintosh LC III and printer. Included are: >Macintosh LC III >StyleWriter >MouseStick II > >I have the original system disks & manuals as well as the following >software/games: > >Stellar 7 >PGA Tour Golf >Word Muchers >Where in the World is Carmen San Diego >Kings Quest V >Casino Game Pack >Math Blaster > >Also have some user manuals: Norton Utilities, Mac for Dummies, SAM >User Manual, 1001 Hints/Tips for Macs They are willing to ship. They can be contacted at kreaton(at)roadrunner.com for a while, but that address will likely change (and it may take a few weeks for the new one to appear). If you can't contact them there, try me at mtapley(at)swri.edu and I'll do my best to forward the message. -- - Mark, 210-379-4635 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Large Asteroids headed toward planets inhabited by beings that don't have technology adequate to stop them: Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.

17 years, 11 months

Cracking open a Compudyne case

by ibgator56＠verizon.net

Hello, I say this old post about your Compudyne case. Do you still have it? All the best, Robert

17 years, 11 months

Support for RT-11

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

An old client has requested help with hardware and software support for some very old PDP-11 systems running RT-11. The best solution may be to use E11 rather than fixing some of the old hardware. Another reason that using E11 would probably be the best solution is that there may be reports that take up to a day to produce using real DEC hardware. Since my estimate with E11 for a current 3 GHz CPU is about 100 times the speed of a PDP-11/93, these reports would take less than 30 minutes. An RT-11 license will also need to be purchased. Does anyone have an e-mail address for Mentec? I contacted John Wilson a few weeks ago, but have not had a response. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

17 years, 11 months

HP 4952A Software

by gordon.oliver＠optusnet.com.au

Kenn, I saw you advice regarding the HO4952A software and the LIF floppy format and as a hp4952A owner, I'm wondering if you know anywhere I could get a copy of the utilities floppy? Gordon Oliver Australia

17 years, 11 months

Minimal CP-M SBC design

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Minimal CP-M SBC design > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 10:31:45 -0700 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 10:09:45 +0100 >> From: Gordon JC Pearce > >> Aha, I disagree. You can't get at the innards of the 6120 at all, >> because it's a chip. If you want to get at the innards of an emulator >> then you can, although how accurately the emulator models the logic of >> the -8 might be an issue (my emulator doesn't model it at all, but >> largely does its own thing). > >I was going to reply along the same lines, but I felt it might not >have convinced my audience. Back in the old days of 22Nice, we added >an emulator feature that allowed a user to write his own port-mapping >code and include it with each program, allowing each individual >program to have its own simulated peripherals, if desired. > >This was no accident or a "feature for feature's sake". A customer >was replacing a controller on a large piece of CNC machine tooling >(they made trailers for large trucks). Communication with the >machine was largely RS-232, so that was no problem with the PC, but >the controller application directly manipulated a UARTs registers. >We rolled an emulator overlay for the UART that functionally mapped >the program's accesses to the PC's 8250-type UART. It worked right >on the first try and the customer was happy for many years--and we >changed not a byte of code in the original program, nor our basic >product. > >That's the beauty of emulation--if the original box uses a bizarre >interface or unobtainium chip, you can emulate it. MUCH easier than >trying to do the same in hardware. Modern PCs tend to have >sufficient excess horsepower that you can emulate just about any 80's >era device without impacting performance. That is the exact reverse case I was refering to. For that case and many others like it I agree heartily. One of the "sims" I use is VMware under Linux So I can run them crufy MS OSs without havignto invest hardware on a daily basis. Doesn't hurt that I can also use it run a sim in a sim like MyZ80 inside W98se on the fast Linux machine. >But, as I've said, I felt that I wasn't going to sway the hard-bitten >hardware folks. As you pointed out, the line between hardware and >software is getting very blurry indeed. Cheap, fast, >microcontrollers now give a new spin to tasks that would have >normally been accomplished with a pile of discrete logic and can now >be done with little more than software. It works for me where it fits. If I want Z80 hardware no amount fo sim will make me happy but at the same time I may use a sim to build code for that Z80. As I've done it that way and in reverse and also to solve the problem of hardware that is unobtaimium. Where it works, I want to emulate a PDP1, or replace a PDP-11. Where it doesn't work so well is when I want to run VMS on a MicroVAX with performance in the NVAX realm. Maybe time to chance the topic??? This is clearly outside the discussion of how to make a minimalist CP/M system ( maybe even SBC). Allison

17 years, 11 months

TEK 4105 terminal, which keyboard was used (needed)

by g-wright＠att.net

I have one of these here with out a Keyboard. any one know which keyboards can be used on it with out seeing smoke. Has a DIN connector Of coarse I'm open to offers from any one that many have a keyboard also............. Thanks, Jerry

17 years, 11 months

DEC8235 and MM57109N ICs

by aek＠bitsavers.org

>until you find that they want $5 for a PDF of a >datasheet. I have three large databook collections (including most of what was at Haltek). I had offered them to CHM, but they've changed their mind about wanting them, and they want the storage space back, so I'm going to chop a subset and scan them at 600dpi over the next few months. The duplicates will probably go up on eBay in 20-book lots. The big problem will be their size and postprocessing them. I don't know if Jay is going to want something this big on bitsavers.

17 years, 11 months

Any interest in TRS-80 DT-1 terminals?

by derschjo＠msu.edu

I have a pair of TRS-80 DT-1 terminals that I've had for awhile and that I don't think I'm ever going to use. I believe they work but I have not done much with them aside from powering them up. They come with dust-covers! (fancy!) Free to whomever wants 'em. They're kinda large (about TRS-80 Model III-sized) so I'd prefer not to ship, but if that's what it takes... If there's no interest I'll probably drop them off at RE-PC in Tukwila, WA in a week or so, maybe they'll find a happy buyer for them there :). Thanks, Josh

17 years, 11 months

Tip: scanning large documents in sections and stitching together

by legalize＠xmission.com

See <http://hugin.sourceforge.net/> for a tool that will allow you to stitch together a larger image from partial scans. This sounds like just the right tool to use when scanning large circuit diagrams on a scanner that can't capture the whole document in one pass. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 11 months

DOS/Floppy backup program benchmarks

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 11:04:15 -0500 > From: Jim Leonard > What I would love to test is Central Point Backup (PC Backup?) prior to > version 6, which is the only version I had available to test. Versions > prior to 6 are supposed to contain code that supports the Option Board I > have in my 5160 for additional speed -- however, I'm not sure how much > speedup I could expect, since some of the faster programs in the > shootout must have been operating at a 1:1 intereave (I was writing all > 40 tracks both sides in less than 30 seconds per disk; can it get any > faster than that?). I'll dig out the old FastBack and see if I've got an older CP backup-- I may well have. If you're formatting then writing, then an OB might be faster, but probably not when simply writing to a formatted diskette, assuming that the sector layout is skewed appropriately to allow for seek and head settling times. In the bad old days of WD 17xx diskette controllers, we had a copy program that formatted and wrote backup data in one pass, as long as the data didn't have any of the "special" bytes that the WD chip interprets differently during a format operation. Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 11 months

Minimal CP-M SBC design

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 10:09:45 +0100 > From: Gordon JC Pearce > Aha, I disagree. You can't get at the innards of the 6120 at all, > because it's a chip. If you want to get at the innards of an emulator > then you can, although how accurately the emulator models the logic of > the -8 might be an issue (my emulator doesn't model it at all, but > largely does its own thing). I was going to reply along the same lines, but I felt it might not have convinced my audience. Back in the old days of 22Nice, we added an emulator feature that allowed a user to write his own port-mapping code and include it with each program, allowing each individual program to have its own simulated peripherals, if desired. This was no accident or a "feature for feature's sake". A customer was replacing a controller on a large piece of CNC machine tooling (they made trailers for large trucks). Communication with the machine was largely RS-232, so that was no problem with the PC, but the controller application directly manipulated a UARTs registers. We rolled an emulator overlay for the UART that functionally mapped the program's accesses to the PC's 8250-type UART. It worked right on the first try and the customer was happy for many years--and we changed not a byte of code in the original program, nor our basic product. That's the beauty of emulation--if the original box uses a bizarre interface or unobtainium chip, you can emulate it. MUCH easier than trying to do the same in hardware. Modern PCs tend to have sufficient excess horsepower that you can emulate just about any 80's era device without impacting performance. But, as I've said, I felt that I wasn't going to sway the hard-bitten hardware folks. As you pointed out, the line between hardware and software is getting very blurry indeed. Cheap, fast, microcontrollers now give a new spin to tasks that would have normally been accomplished with a pile of discrete logic and can now be done with little more than software. Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 11 months

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