13 Aug
2006
13 Aug
'06
7:05 p.m.
On 8/14/06, Peter C. Wallace <pcw at mesanet.com> wrote:
I'd build one, especially if it was Negibus-compatible. I could
attach a real DF-32 to it. ;-)
Has anyone estimated the physical size? A real PDP-8/S has about 1000
transistors and a lot more passives than that, not counting external
things like a TTY interface (besides serializing the ALU, that's one
of the ways they shoehorned Straight-8 technology into such a tiny
box).
One could always start small and build something simpler from the same
technology - a simple clock or something - sort of a test-drive to see
what the scope of a full processor would entail.
-ethan
One thing that
I think *would* be awesome in surface mount,
would be to do a "scale model" based on the straight-8, with
all those little SMT diodes and transistors, and no logic
IC's at all (except possibly some SMT RAM to replace the core
planes) :-).
Vince
(It might also be cool to make some of the diodes the glowing kind.)
That has been discussed before. It would be fun to do something like the
PDP8-S on a single PCB with only resistors, capacitors, SOT-23 transistors and
dual diodes (And yes LEDs in all the FF outputs would be nice).