28 Feb
2008
28 Feb
'08
10:30 a.m.
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Josef Chessor <josefcub at gmail.com> wrote:
Well, I should be able to get access to a metal shop at my university.
It would be a fun design project, I think.
If I ever design a computer from the ground up (senior design
project?), it's definitely going to have a spiffy front panel.
John
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 11:52 AM, John Floren
<slawmaster at gmail.com> wrote:
I just wonder how you'll connect it so that, without any kind of
operating system, you can use the panel. If you want to go the serial
or parallel route, just build the panel around some microcontrollers
and it'll probably be nice... but only after you've brought up an OS
with some appropriate drivers. I'm kinda thinking that modern PCs
just aren't built to have front panels the way a PDP-8 did.
That is a lot of switches, but didn't CDC
(and other companies, I just
thought of CDC first) make 60-bit and other large word-size machines,
which I can only assume also had front panels?
That's one daunting front panel, that's for sure! Of course, CDC
had larger budgets than we usually do. ;-)
Sure, it may be
annoying and impractical to have 128 switches, but it would be fun to
make and play with. I guess if it comes down to it, I could just make
one for the parallel port and figure out some way to interface it to
various simulators...
I'd dreamed of having a "Generic Front Panel", 16-bit address/8-bit
data, hooked up via RS-232 for simulator uses. I admit that your idea
controlling a PC in this way would be really, really cool. Of limited
utility outside of learning, though. The biggest
hurdle, I guess, would be figuring out how to interface it
to the machine in a good way. The second biggest problem would be
finding where to get that many identical switches and lights without
bankrupting myself.
Buying in bulk is usually the only solution, because I wouldn't really
want to scavenge anything from a classic machine to do something like
this. Crafting a beautiful panel to install them in is the real
challenge, though.