31 Dec
2008
31 Dec
'08
4:38 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Happy new year! You know, I find it a little hard to
accept machines made
in 1999 as being 'classic' :-)
Was the Tube ULA (or the Tube interface) fully documented anywhere?
Not *completely*, AFAIK - although there are fragments all over the place. I
think there's enough amassed wisdom around now that it *could* be done though,
because the software to drive either side is understood enough, as is the
electrical (physical) interface, and there are still survivors of all the
vintage hardware which made use of the ULA.
The problem is that very few people have both a grasp on that knowledge and
the ability to do the necessary electronic design - it's only really worth it
for a drop-in replacement (i.e. a single chip or a very small daughter-board
to plug into the ULA's 40-pin to DIP socket) because (as Phil says) it'd be a
reasonably large board to do it as discrete logic.
cheers
Jules
* A
drop-in replacement for Acorn's TUBE ULA would be nice - I used my=20
last remaining spare a couple of years ago, and still have a couple of=20
devices with dead ones - swapping in from a working unit is a real pain.
Hmm,
shouldn't be too hard with modern programmable-logic devices.