I have brought my SWTPC 6800 system back to life that
I built as a kid
in 1976. It is pretty heavily loaded with RAM cards, floppy controller,
etc. and the 8V power supply rail was never really able to hold its own.
It sits at about 6.5V now... driving many 5V regulators on the various
cards. No where near enough margin going into those.
So, I am contemplating the following,
1) rebuild entire power supply using three switchers, 7.5v unit nudged
up to 8V and two 12V units to supply ?12 on the backplane. <snip>
2) add a new transformer to the existing supply just for the 8V rail.
<snip>
3) scuttle the legacy RAM cards, most of which are 4K in size built
with 2102's... and one 16K built with 2114... and replace them with a
single homebrew RAM card using one 32Kx8 SRAM drawing almost no power
in comparison to these old cards.
Any recommendations on the best choice?
Chris
Chris,
If you're planning on using the system somewhat frequently I suggest
making the newer RAM card, keeping the power supply as-is, and saving
the old RAM cards for the future in events where you want the original
system intact. Best of both worlds.
Bill Degnan