20 Jun
2009
20 Jun
'09
12:29 p.m.
So Tony, perhaps you could join in, in the same style
and write up a bit
of what you love about old hardware and keeping it running, what's
enjoyable and rewarding about it, etc.
It's sometimes difficult to explain why you like something. You know you
do, but don't know why. But I'll give it a go.
If I was being flippant I'd point out that earlier in this thread
somebody said 'Anyone can run the emulator'. I'd prefer to do something
that not everybody can do :-). But there's a lot more to it than that...
I think my love of the real old hardware comes from two things. Firstly,
I like to fully understand things. There is no way I can understand a
machine with most of the logic in undocumented ASICs. I can understand a
TTL-built minicomputer., Heck, there are even transsitor-level schematics
of some of the chips in the databook.
The second thing is that I love puzzles. Figuring out how the machine
really works is a puzzle. So is finding and correcting faults. As I've
mentioned before. my method of faultfinding is to grab the test gear,
make some measurements and then think about them -- solving the puzzle.
And then, and only then, do I make any changes to the machine. Of course
quite often I get it wrong the first time, I don't replace the right
part. So I make some more measurements and think again.
There is a certain joy in taking a machine that's, perhaps, 35 years old,
and getting it to work again.
So we have hardware work, emulator work, and replica
work. Any other
big field I've missed that can be part of this hobby of ours? Perhaps
Preserving the contents of old storage media ? The software is useful
(I hesitate to say essential) for running the real hardware, for running
on an emulator, and for running on a replica.
-tony