Hi,
I recently received my new PDP-8/A that I bought on eBay.
The good news is that it arrived in useable condition, and
comes with a 10Mb disk drive (Shugart 4004) and high-speed
paper tape reader.
The bad news seems to be that the software is all specific
to the machine's former life as a CNC machine controller
(MM180).
The configuration seems to start with a standard 8/E cpu
with EAE in the 8/A chassis with 32K of memory and the
usual option cards. But for the disk and tape (which were
the exciting parts, for me), there is a 3-card set with a
6800 on it that controls the disk, the paper tape reader,
the CNC servos, and a bunch of other stuff. Effectively,
all the non-console I/O is given over to the 6800 as a
kind of I/O processor.
Anyone have any experience with these? The 6800 board is
KT (Kearney & Trecker) 1-20410, the board with the PIO chips
is KT 1-20411, and the disk interface board is KT 1-20666.
Thanks,
Vince
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