18 Aug
2006
18 Aug
'06
3:38 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
My first thought its that the 'ideal first classic' depends very much on
what you're interested in. OK, I am the exception, being primarily a
hardware person, so my interest is in CPUs built from simple-ish logic
chips (the 74x181 being about the most complicated device I like to see
in a CPU :-)).
Well my first computer other than useing a PDP-8 was
FPGA design that was tied to the prototype board and
PC to download the internal logic. The next design was going to be
a CPLD design, and I got the chips for that. Now I am
working on a 2901 design. All at the moment only on paper
but something different than a 8 or 16 bit cpu from Intel
or Motorola.
My second thought is that the 'ideal first
classic' is the one you're
offered. Most of us don't have the luxury of being able to pick any
classic computer, we restore the machine we can get our grubby little
hands on :-)
I bought a SBC1620, what else is the most Classic -- a PDP 8.
This can lead to some interesting 'problems'.
The first minicomputer I
got -- in fact the first machine I had without a single-chip CPU was a
Philips P850. A machine that few people have ever heard of, let alone
know anything about. I was very much on my own with the machine and the
technical manual....
What I like about about this list is there is other computers than
DEC's products out there and I would like to know more about the
others.