2 Mar
2009
2 Mar
'09
9:34 a.m.
On Mar 2, 2009, at 11:52 AM, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
I think that is a REALLY good idea!
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
Does anyone
know anything about shoehorning a front panel with lots
of lights and switches onto a compact pdp11 (say, a /73 or /83)?
I think that the easiest way to do this (and what I would probably do)
would be to put some sort of microcontroller in line with the console
port, and make it use ODT to do front-panel functions. That won't get
you a switches and lights register, but it'll get you most of the
functionality that is available on a Unibus-11's FP.
With a little bit of hardware hackery (probably not even that much, if
you don't mind modifying a console SLU board to do it), you could
probably even put a switch and lights register on the QBUS, along with
intercepting the console port for ODT.