3 Mar
2005
3 Mar
'05
9:43 p.m.
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 00:21:32 -0500, Patrick Finnegan
<pat at computer-refuge.org> wrote:
Curt @ Atari Museum declared on Thursday 03 March 2005
11:47 pm:
I was scared away by PCI too. Their are PLX PCI chipsets, and FPGA PCI
cores but you still need to read the PCI protocol.
I personally would rather see some more hobbyist
work on PCI Qbus
and/or Unibus cards, the current commercial ones run $2500-$3000 and
it would be GREAT to run SimH and have access to all the drives, tape
systems and so forth directly with something more like $250-$500 vs
the $2500-$3000 cards.
I've considered this before, and the PCI part seems to be a sizable
stubling block.
An ISA card might be an easier way to start off. I've got access to a
fair range of machines with ISA slots, from IBM 5150 PCs to PIII
desktops and IBM RS/6000s to DEC Alphas.
ISA is easier but less attractive, because people who are after PCI
QBUS are after the speed of newer CPU's.
vax, 9000
Hmm, a ISA->QBUS adapter in an Alpha, running SIMH and talking to an
RL02. This sounds like fun. :) Or hell, port the NetBSD/vax RL02
driver (after fixing it so it actually worked again) to NetBSD/Alpha (or
Linux/Alpha if one was so inclined). :)
Pat
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