29 Feb
2008
29 Feb
'08
6:11 a.m.
Jeff Davis wrote:
On Thu, February 28, 2008 10:17 am, Josef Chessor
wrote:
That seems more achievable - although I think the OP wanted to control that
actual PC, not a vintage emulator running on it.
But yep, easiest route is probably to run linux/*BSD on a PC with no
keyboard/mouse/display and then run the emulator on that. Hook the front panel
into either a serial port (and use all the standard TTY access code for I/O
access) or the parallel port (there's certainly support for userspace parallel
port I/O in the Linux kernel - not sure about *BSD).
How to actually merge that support into whatever emulator's running is another
matter, but presumably most of them have reasonably sane code for the CPU and
memory emulation.
Maybe some sort of "generic front panel API" is useful - *most* FP's are
probably pretty generic in what they do (even though the layout and number of
switches/lights changes)
cheers
Jules
I'd dreamed of having a "Generic Front
Panel", 16-bit address/8-bit
data, hooked up via RS-232 for simulator uses. I admit that your idea
controlling a PC in this way would be really, really cool. Of limited
utility outside of learning, though.
/me too! I was talking a few days ago about how I couldn't afford an Altair
or IMSAI, so I'd like to make a box with a pc inside running an emulator, and
a front panel with altair-like switches connected to serial or parallel port
via an atmel avr microcontroller, which a cp/m emulator reads as the front
panel.