6 Oct
2007
6 Oct
'07
12:42 a.m.
On Friday 05 October 2007 18:42, Tony Duell wrote:
How fancy is fancy?
Not too terribly, considering I can't in any way justify spending much if any
money on such a thing. The ability to interrupt any of the pins, maybe do
cross-connecting, and LED indicators would be nice.
I'm not so sure about that. Very often in setting
up a vintage computer
you'll need a special cable (RS232 serial cables being an obvious
example, there are all sorts of odd pin-swaps you need for some
machines...), and it makes a lot of sense to be abe to make it up. You
can't always buy the right cable off-the-shelf, particularly not for
obscure classics.
I'd *still* like to someday get my hands on one of the fancier breakout
boxes I used to see in catalogs... :-) I've got one here that does Bit-Error-Rate test,
and anohter that will do
RS232-current loop conversions, RS232 to parallel conversions, test RS232,
current loop, or parallel devices, and even program EPROMs. Oh, it's got a
little strip-printer built in too.
Well, I don't see me affording anything like that any time soon, though if I
were to somehow or other acquire one, I surely would NOT be
disappointed. :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin