21 Oct
2015
21 Oct
'15
10:37 p.m.
Well done. Have you looked at 3D printing? Not fast, not especially
cheap, but potentially the least difficult developmentally. And once
it's set up you can just let her rip and churn them out.
This is only going in one direction of course... once you have the
11/70 nailed, you *have* to do a pdp-15... which leads logically to a
pdp-12, since the bezel/frame is identical... two for the price/effort
of one! And then just scale it up for a KA10... :-)
I love your 8/I, having a lot of fun with that! But I'm not sure
there's a compelling reason not to do these as 1/1 scale replicas
going forward? Because if you do 1/1 scale, you also have a market for
replica bezels, switches etc with people who are restoring *real*
hardware...
Maybe we can crowdsource a bit here... we do it with FOSS of course,
why not hardware? "you do the switches, I'll do the frame, Oscar has
the electronics covered..." - I'm sure there would be enough interest.
Mike
On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 11:00 AM, Oscar Vermeulen
<oscar.vermeulen at hotmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
--
http://www.corestore.org
'No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother.
Not for millions, not for glory, not for fame.
For one person, in the dark, where no one will ever know or see.'
> Oscar is already working on another very
promising product.
> [..]He will
also pay a visit to my "museum" to take a few
measurements.
Sorry, can't say more
> I'll leave that up to Oscar. Perhaps he
want to stay "below the radar" until that project is finished ...
Thanks for the kind words on my strange replica mania! We all need to do silly things at
some point in our lives.
No secret... I'd love to do an "Open Source Hardware" PDP-11/70 replica (or
remake - whatever choice of words is preferred). Electronically, it would a simple
variation on the PiDP-8 (i.e., simh brains on a Raspberry Pi, hiding behind a front panel
PCB). It's just a different emulator from the simh stable with less LEDs.
But a 11/70 replica needs two physical 'cosmetic elements': proper switches, and
the white bezel/frame. The switches *seem* to be feasible to produce cheaply (I will know
in a month with PDP-8/I switches...). The white bezel though brings me into unknown
territory. 3D CAD (based on Museum Measurements), then injection molding or vacuum
forming. Or any technique to produce a plastic object in medium quantities. All I know so
far is that it's very feasible - and much cheaper to do than just a few years ago.
If anyone here *does* have know-how in this field, I'd love any advice. I got some
preliminary quotes and recommendations on making a case replica using vacuum forming.
Which is relatively cheap. Not perfect, but low cost is very important for such a gadget.
Kind regards,
Oscar.