28 Feb
2008
28 Feb
'08
9:52 a.m.
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 9:40 AM, Josef Chessor <josefcub at gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 11:33 AM, John Floren
<slawmaster at gmail.com> wrote:
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? 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...
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.
John
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
I'd really like to have something like one of
the old
mainframe/minicomputer control panels for my PC, but I'm just not sure
how to implement it. Anybody here tried something like that? Ideally,
you could power it on, see registers, toggle stuff into memory, have
lights for interrupts, that kind of thing. Yeah, I know, as soon as I
bring up an operating system, the ability to toggle things into memory
would be rather dangerous, but I just can't resist the charm of the
idea :)
So... doable? Impossible? Improbable?
My first thought was "That's a lot of lights and switches!" On a
modern, 64-bit, PC we're looking at roughly what, 128 switches?
Yeowch!
Now I do know of this kit, in prototype stage from Briel Computers:
http://www.brielcomputers.com/altairpc.html
Certainly not exactly what you were thinking of, but in a similar vein.
Josef