3 Mar
2017
3 Mar
'17
2:58 p.m.
I made this as a joke, but also as a simple test device for a NatInst
PCI-DIO-96 GPIO card I was writing a driver for:
https://www.facebook.com/john.m.b.wilson/videos/10212562451077947/
It occurred to me that lots of old machines had binary front panels
(switches and lights) and lots of machines had keypad front panels (octal
or hex, with 7-segment LEDs), but I'd never seen a binary keypad front
panel. Plus I wanted to experiment with Cherry MX keyswitches, and try out
wasdkeyboards's custom keycaps (but they're $7/ea so I didn't want to try
anything too big the first time). That plus two 74LS132s, four 74LS240s,
and two 74LS273s, discrete stuff and cabling, and a PCI-DIO-96 that was
$25 on eBay, and it works.
"set dr dio96:" in the DOS and stand-alone versions of E11 V7.3 makes it
(or anyone else's homemade doohicky) appear at 777570 as usual (or you can
add "set dr r0" to get the R0-during-WAIT display like on a PDP-11/70 --
whatever your OS's NULJOB uses). I'd give Gerbers to anyone who cares
but really it's just a dumb joke. Fun one though.
John Wilson
D Bit
3 Mar
3 Mar
3:46 p.m.
On Mar 3, 2017 12:58 PM, "John Wilson via cctalk" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
wrote:
It occurred to me that lots of old machines had binary
front panels
(switches and lights) and lots of machines had keypad front panels (octal
or hex, with 7-segment LEDs), but I'd never seen a binary keypad front
panel.
It wasn't a computer, but the first commercial frequency-synthesized
scanning receiver, the Tennellec Memoryscan, circa 1974, used a binary
keypad. It came with a fat book listing a 16-bit binary code for each
frequency the scanner could receive. You could program up to 16 such codes
into the scanner.
My grandfather bought one for my grandmother when I was 10 years old, and I
was put in charge of programming in the codes for the frequencies my
grandmother selected. Since I already new binary, I worked out formulas for
the codes so that I wouldn't have to use the book. That way I could program
the scanner in only ten times the time.
It did come in handy some years later when my grandmother wanted to changes
the frequencies, but the code book had been lost.
5:11 p.m.
On 3/3/2017 12:58 PM, John Wilson via cctalk wrote:
I made this as a joke, but also as a simple test
device for a NatInst
PCI-DIO-96 GPIO card I was writing a driver for:
https://www.facebook.com/john.m.b.wilson/videos/10212562451077947/
It occurred to me that lots of old machines had binary front panels
(switches and lights) and lots of machines had keypad front panels (octal
or hex, with 7-segment LEDs), but I'd never seen a binary keypad front
panel. Plus I wanted to experiment with Cherry MX keyswitches, and try out
wasdkeyboards's custom keycaps (but they're $7/ea so I didn't want to try
anything too big the first time). That plus two 74LS132s, four 74LS240s,
and two 74LS273s, discrete stuff and cabling, and a PCI-DIO-96 that was
$25 on eBay, and it works.
"set dr dio96:" in the DOS and stand-alone versions of E11 V7.3 makes it
(or anyone else's homemade doohicky) appear at 777570 as usual (or you can
add "set dr r0" to get the R0-during-WAIT display like on a PDP-11/70 --
whatever your OS's NULJOB uses). I'd give Gerbers to anyone who cares
but really it's just a dumb joke. Fun one though.
John Wilson
D Bit
Use a TELEPHONE keypad 0-7 OCTAL 8 and 9 binary. :)
6:03 p.m.
On Fri, Mar 03, 2017 at 03:11:21PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote:
Use a TELEPHONE keypad 0-7 OCTAL 8 and 9 binary. :)
I like it! Or else make them dit and dah (like on a Morse keyer) so you
can have alphanumeric entry? Eons ago a friend of mine wanted to design
an audio protocol (e.g. using a Votrax SC-01 and an ADC), figuring that the
word "ZERO!" has a lot more of a high-frequency component so it wouldn't
take much processing (this was in 8-bit days) to distinguish it from "ONE!".
The snag was that he wanted to add "WHAT?" as an error-correction feature.
John Wilson
D Bit
4 Mar
4 Mar
9:23 a.m.
On 3 March 2017 at 20:58, John Wilson via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I'd give Gerbers to anyone who cares
but really it's just a dumb joke. Fun one though.
Heh. Cool. :?)
--
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