FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8)

On 10/17/07, woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: Yeah.... my mother had a Selectric typewriter back when we got our first computer (32K PET). She was, at first, interested in the solenoid-based typewriter adapter, but I think it turned out to be too expensive for her. I didn't get a printer on a computer until many years later, and that was dot matrix. Besides calculators, I remember an article in Byte to adapt a TI Speak-n-Spell to a computer. Given that the toys weren't cheap, I don't know how much it would have saved over an SC-02 Votrax chip, but certainly the Speak-n-Spell hack was interesting. I was just a bit bummed because as a PET-owning kid, I was just on the edge of that stuff - the "mainstream" of the day for those sorts of projects was _not_ my platform, and I was just learning how to do this stuff and, though I tried a few of these hacks, my success rate was substantially under 100% (the typewriter solenoid interface was one of those - there was not plug-and-play PET version. It was strictly roll-your-own). But it was all fun and instructional, even if it wasn't always successful. -ethan