Making vintage computers - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

29 May 2009

Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org> wrote:

...
  On Thursday 28 May 2009, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
  Doug Jackson wrote:
  I would personally consider purchasing a re
manufactured Vintage
 computer -

 Something running, say,  a 6502, 8080, 8085, or Z80.  Definitely
 not interested in anything post 8085.

 Not sure what I would do with an ISA bus.  Not enough pins on my
 processor to drive all of the address bits.
 Multi CPU systems are probably to far out of the intent of the
 Vintage realm for me to consider.  There ARE multi-CPU vintage systems.  Some of
the CPUs in question
 were many, many boards full of chips.  
 The first (SMP) one that comes to mind is a VAX 8800 (I only have 1/2, 
 aka an 8700), or my VAXstation 3520/3540.

 Of course, there were other non-SMP systems (like the Dual VAX 
 (11/780)), and systems that had multiple CPUs but weren't really 
 dual-processor (DEC Rainbow). 
What about PDP-10 systems? Those could be SMP systems. I know of one 
person who ran a 3xKI10 system with TOPS-10. True SMP...
And then we have the PDP-11/74 (up to 4 CPUs), but they are probably 
even harder to find than KI10 systems.

DEC were doing SMP long before they even started spelling "VAX". :-)

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol