New PDP-11 stuff

I just thought I'd give an update on the various progress on the "new" PDP-11 stuff that I'm working on. As you all know the KM11 replica is now available. I have some "accessories" made up for it (actually someone did them on their own and I bought them). The accessories include some really cool plastic that allows the overlays to be set up on the board. I'll put some more information up on my website (http://www.shiresoft.com/products) shortly. I still have to make up the actual overlays themselves. I'm almost ready to send the MEM11A board out for fab. The layout has passed all of the checks (both EagleCAD and the board house). So I expect to have production boards ready by the end of April (protos back by end of February, debug, etc). Production boards (to get "reasonable" pricing) take 4 weeks. Just to let y'all know now, I'll need some firm orders before I go and build the production boards. To get the price I've indicated my website, I have to fork over ~$2K for the production run. I'm also finishing up a design for a "Unibus Analyzer". One of the problems I've had in debugging Unibus systems has been to: 1. get all of the signals grouped reasonably so I don't have to keep counting pins (and half the time getting it wrong) on the backplane. 2. having reasonable triggers 3. being able to "see" all of the signals at once. So, what I've done is design a board that goes in any SPC slot (...OK so it's not strictly Unibus...shoot me): 1. buffers and groups all of the unibus signals for easy access for a scope and/or logic analyzer probes (ie all address signals are grouped together, all data, etc) 2. provides comparators for the address and data lines to provide pattern matching to be used as a trigger for scope/logic analyzer. 3. provides LEDs for *all* unibus signals. Interested? Comments? With the recent talk about providing a "cool" front panel for an 11/44, I think I have an idea. I need to look at the details a bit more, but here's what I think it'll be able to do: 1. set an address 2. examine contents of memory 3. write into memory 4. run/halt CPU (haven't quite thought that one out completely yet). 5. switch register at a settable address. It'll be a two board set, one goes into (you guessed it) an SPC slot and has ribbon cables that go to the "lights & switches" that's mounted where you want it. It should work in any Unibus 11, but obviously would be best in 11/04, 11/24, 11/34, 11/44. I also think that it could be adapted to be used in a Qbus system. I'm taking the approach that the external lights & switches board would be common between the Unibus and Qbus versions. Do folks have other things they'd like done? BTW the disk emulator project is progressing (but slowly...it's a reasonably complex design and I want to get it "right"). These other projects are actually helping me out with it. -- TTFN - Guy