OT-ish: Build-it stuff

On 6/11/2006 at 1:08 PM Don Y wrote: Well, okay. Here's my take--while the miniature front panel is kind of cute, why the PDP-8? To my mind, the PDP-11 was a giant leap forward in terms of usability and might be a better target for implementation. The PDP-8 had a very small instruction set, miserable memory management and wasn't very fast (I'll bet the uC on the IDE drive that it's attached to is at least an order of magnitude faster). I have no particular fondness for it. Perhaps someone else does. Now, put out something that will exercise my mind a bit, say a multicore VLIW machine with vector capabilities, and I could get interested. How about a Dataflow machine? One could see the same thing in amateur radio or even audio. At one time, the way to get some of the best stuff at affordable prices was to build your own. When I was active in amateur radio, I built all of my own equipment--even my receiver. But after awhile, it was clear that folks with more money to spend than I had could buy better than the builders could build. So you got the phenomenon of the geezers with KWM-2s and whatnot sitting around and whiling away the hours on 75 meter fone. I would have sooner had a root canal than do that--it might as well be CB. Thank heavens I discovered computers. Well, now computers have turned into a plug-in artist's dream. In fact, things have gone a step further than amateur radio--the ready-made stuff is not only good, it's DISPOSABLE. What's the point of fooling with this stuff trying to make it better? I'd sooner make my own paper towels. Sure, I've got lots of memories tied up in this stuff. But they're just that--memories and the gear is just that--stuff. I want to make some new memories while I still have time. The stuff's just a means to an end. Cheers, Chuck