On Sun, 16 Dec 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote:
see below, plz.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter C. Wallace" <pcw(a)mesanet.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: MITS 2SIO serial chip?
On Sun, 16 Dec 2001, Ben Franchuk wrote:
ajp166 wrote:
PALS are 1970s technology, really old to some of
us.
Arg! And here I thought the 8008 was 70's technology.
Well more into the 80s since the PAL was invented in 1978...
I've stumbled over a 1978 databook from MMI this weekend a couple of times,
that
suggests the 16L/R/X/A series is new product in 1978, but there were quite a few
PALs that predate them. Signetics had a different sort of device than MMI, that
also goes back to the '70's.
There were earlier programmable logic parts, but the PAL was invented in
in 1978 by Birkner and Chua...
Actually thats not true. BY 1981 you have
peripherals in the 125ns read
write timing range. Then again Z80 at that time was just hinting at 6mhz
so z80 peripherals were of an according spped for that cpu. However,
other
parts were faster and often far cheaper.
If you must know it is a floppy disk controller I need. Right now
I plan to use WD2797 floppy disk controller. I would love to use
a newer chip,but I can't find any! I want to stay with DIP's and PLCC's
here. This may be the 21 century but my soldering skills are the 19'th.
Actually Its possible to do QFPs pretty easy with just a good soldering
iron and lots of flux... Even BGA's aren't too hard with a hot air gun
(surface tension does the work)
Personally if I wanted the SIO functionality for
a NON-z80 system I'd
never use the zilog part. Reason it was not cheap,nor was it easy to
use for non-z80 systems. They were designed for the Z80, period.
Unfortunatly they were slow. If you wanted faster the 83xx or 85xx
parts from Zilog were a far better choice but Zbus was scary to most
people and they weren't cheap. The other part of this is NEC and
Intel did the MPSC (NEC D7201, Intel 8274) which was functionally
identical to the SIO and was "tuned" for 8080/8085/8088/8086 style
busses and faster as well. It was a more generic part than the SIO.
Also around that time Signetics and friends were doing the 2681 part
that was cheap and available in various flavors. Peripherals back then
were quite varied.
I still favor the simple dumb uart chip. TR1602?. I like things than
you hit reset, it starts ... not like the classic star-trek computers
that always go down. Usually when you need them.
I always liked them, too,
except for the space they required, including the
external clock generator(s).
Can you still get TR1602's? I remember building something with them (maybe
it was a 1402) and 3341 FIFO's in the 70's
I remember an ad not long ago that listed, among other things, the 1602.
I've
not seen the 3341 for quite a long while, since there are CMOS versions.
Peter Wallace
Peter Wallace
Mesa Electronics