18 May
2013
18 May
'13
3:39 p.m.
On 05/18/2013 04:50 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 05/18/2013 04:07 PM, Philipp Hachtmann wrote:
I agree. Besides a whole pc is wasted. All that is needed is a
Beagleboard or RaspberryPi
running linux and the TU58 emulation for two drives. Heck an 8051 can
do that (see spare
time gizmos tu58em)!
A more modern version could easily put a 8gb micro SD effectively at the
end of a serial port
for many different machines as most all DEC machines had serial and a
serial board is the
easiest thing to build for PDP8, and they are common for PDP11, same for
VAX.
OH and before I hear whinging about 12 bit systems needed 12 bit
storage... you can easily
pack two words to 3bytes or just use two bytes and only 6bits of each.
Horrific then but
storage is cheap now (for modern stuff). Also for PDP8 a CF in IDE mode
is 16bits wide,
and tossing the top 4 bits is not criminal and the CF will not care. A
PIO driver is simple.
That solves the minimal serial connected mass storage. Its not the
fasted thing but better
than nothing or worse living on the end of a PC.
Allison
Am 18.05.2013 09:54, schrieb Paul Birkel:
Yebbut...having a grand old system like a PDP-11 on
"life support" by
connecting it to a PC is something that I (and others) find extremely
distasteful. A standalone device would definitely have a market.
-Dave Consider sticking with period-appropriate storage
devices but integrate
emulation-support (rather than interfaces to hard-to-get hardware): DF32,
RL01/RL02, RK05, RX01/02, possibly others ... ? Maybe even TU56 (and TU58).
For example, see:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?35525-RL02-RL01-simu…
But this guy did it the hard way: Create an emulation that makes use of the
serial drive interface.
It's easier to emulate peripherals on a system level i.e. to connect the FPGA
to the system bus and then emulate the controller, drives, and media.
The project you mentioned only emulates drive and media. As the drive
interface is (pure assumption!) quite low level bit serial, this is not
trivial. But possible.