2 Mar
2009
2 Mar
'09
8:52 a.m.
On Monday 02 March 2009, David Griffith wrote:
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.
Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org