14 Apr
2013
14 Apr
'13
1:44 p.m.
On 14 Apr 2013, at 16:06, "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
Exactly! You can actually get at the individual parts! Everything isn't 200%
integrated. ;)
Yeah. Fixing the problem is a large part of the fun. ;)
I don't mind fixing the occasional software problem too though. ;)
Understandable. I, however find failures in
older gear
fascinating...you can actually fix them a lot of the time. ;) They're
also a great learning experience as you can actually get at the components!
So do I. I much prefer to diagnose and rpeair faults logically, aomethign
you cna do wit hthe older machines.
I am currnetly having a conversation with a guy in the Netherlands who is
repairing a machine of a simialr fintage (not a PDP11). He's borrowed a
logic analyser and we're goign thoguh it a the level of 'Well, in this
microisntrucionm, the program counter is fed ot one inptu of the LAU, a
constand 1 is fed to the other intput, so as to add 1 to the PC ot
increment it. Now let's see if that's what's going on...' (OK, it's
not
quite that, the machine in question is bit-serial...)
HE seems ot be loving it. Being able to see how registers are sleected,
ho data flows from one ot anotehr, and so on .
Very interesting! I don't have too much low-level hardware knowledge (yet. I intend
to! I'm still young.) but that still sounds extremely fun.
I just like a challenge, a broken system that I can get at makes me think.
I hate t osay this, but has a hardware hacker, half the time once I've
got a system working and running the OS, I lose interest in it and find
soemthing else to wrok on :-). And then, of course, go back to thwroking
amchine when I have some new peripheral to add to it.
-tony