15 Jun
2009
15 Jun
'09
1:09 p.m.
Also, Al had some good points, ESPECIALLY when it
comes to mainframish
computers. If you are a lover of, just to pick one, a PDP 11/45
machine, if you pass on your love for the machine to a young person,
that person becomes a serious competitor for EVERY bit of kit you need,
That seems like a very selfish attidude. I assume you're not saying that
we shouldn't encourage new people into the hobby since they'll compete
with us for nice machine. Certainly I don't feel that way at all.
But, encouraging others to explore classic SOFTWARE on
emulators takes
away nothing from anyone, and in point of fact, will often INCREASE the
number of "toys" for everyone. If someone creates a new emulator, or
scrounges around and finds a boot tape for an O/S that had gone
"missing," EVERYONE can have a copy of it, generally for free. With
No it's not free. Even if the emulator software is free, the machine to
run it on is not. Period. You have, alas, touched a nerve here, I object
to this attitude that 'everybody' has a PC/cellphone/MP3 player/digital
camera. I don't, nor do many people I know.
In fact for me to be able to run any of the emulators at a sensible speed
it would cost me more than I've spent on any one of my classic computers.
OK, I was lucky and got many of them before they became collectable, but
I've bought interesting machines (to me) in the last year or so for a lot
less than I'd spend on a machine to run an emulator.
this branch of the hobby, I have the money and space
to take it as far
as I want. I like that.
If you enjoy running old software on emulators, great. I am not going to
say you're wrong to do so (because you're not) .But I'd rather grab
'scope and soldering iron and dive into a 1970's TTL-built CPU...
[...]
Yes, but the
emulator won't allow you to stick in a KM11, put one of the
CPU boards on an extender and probe arround will single-stepping at the
clock cycle level. You won't have the fun of replacing a disk head and
doing the alingment. You won't have to chase grants up and down the
backplane.
I thought I was up on Brit tech-speak, but "grants" is one I don't
know. What are "grants?" True enough, Tony, but with the right emulator, I CAN
single step, and
Aingle-step instructiosn, possibly. But single-step the CPU microcode?
And at a clock cycle level (even lower than microcode)? I've not seen an
emulator thart does that (it's possible, of course).
examine register contents, and so on. And I don't
HAVE to repair the
hardware to keep it going. I used to maintain a mailing list on a
Crazy as it sounds, I like finding hardware faults. It's like solving
puzzles...
-tony