31 Jul
2007
31 Jul
'07
12:36 p.m.
On 7/31/07, Bill Sudbrink <wh.sudbrink at verizon.net> wrote:
My wife does doll houses now and then. I have
wondered whether a
fully functional (front panel, that is) 1/12 scale IMSAI would be possible.
Z80 processor, 64K RAM, maybe a few interesting front panel programs
in ROM... flip the bit, cylon eyes, simple count up/down. Run on a
watch battery.
Hmm... A real IMSAI is what, 10.5" tall, 19" wide, and about 24"-36"
deep? That sounds difficult to reproduce at 1/12th scale, but it
might be possible to replicate an IMSAI front panel with fiber optics,
run them under the floor of the doll house to a hidden Z-80 board
(that could still be done with a lot of SMT to make it small).
It comes to mind that a microSD card is on the close order of the
dimensions of a 1/12-scale 8" floppy ;-) (2/3" x 2/3")
-ethan
1:40 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
On 7/31/07, Bill Sudbrink <wh.sudbrink at verizon.net> wrote:
Hey! It's 19 and 1/2 inches wide ;-) But only 7 inches tall :-(
If I ever do it, I might cheat and make it a full 2" wide.
I was hoping to get most of (if not all of) the electronics into a
single chip. The front panel switch size would be in the ballpark of
DIP switches and there are micro surface mount LEDs that I calculated
would fit, a problem might be that they might all blur together at
full brightness.
My wife does doll houses now and then. I have
wondered whether a
fully functional (front panel, that is) 1/12 scale IMSAI would
be possible.
Z80 processor, 64K RAM, maybe a few interesting front panel programs
in ROM... flip the bit, cylon eyes, simple count up/down. Run on a
watch battery.
Hmm... A real IMSAI is what, 10.5" tall, 19" wide, and about 24"-36"
deep? That sounds difficult to reproduce at 1/12th scale, but it
might be possible to replicate an IMSAI front panel with fiber optics,
run them under the floor of the doll house to a hidden Z-80 board
(that could still be done with a lot of SMT to make it small). It comes to mind that a microSD card is on the close
order of the
dimensions of a 1/12-scale 8" floppy ;-) (2/3" x 2/3")
Hans Franke mentioned the same thing when I shared the idea with him.
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5:02 PM
4:09 p.m.
On 31 Jul 2007 at 14:36, Ethan Dicks wrote:
Hmm... A real IMSAI is what, 10.5" tall, 19"
wide, and about 24"-36"
deep? That sounds difficult to reproduce at 1/12th scale, but it
might be possible to replicate an IMSAI front panel with fiber optics,
run them under the floor of the doll house to a hidden Z-80 board
(that could still be done with a lot of SMT to make it small).
Golly, the microprocessors they're coming out with nowadays would be
pretty much to scale on a chip basis. Consider, for example, the ST
ST/7 MPUs in TFBGA packaging--what, 4mm square? With an instruction
set similar to a 6502, you should come close to building a KIM-1 to
scale--if only you could find a small-enough display and keypad...
Instead of doing a PDP-8 on an FPGA, you might as well emulate one in
software on one of the available MCUs. Think of what you could do
with, say, a Parallax Propeller or even one of the ARM9 chips...
Cheers,
Chuck
1 Aug
1 Aug
4 a.m.
On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 02:36:42PM -0500, Ethan Dicks wrote:
Hmm... A real IMSAI is what, 10.5" tall, 19"
wide, and about 24"-36"
deep? That sounds difficult to reproduce at 1/12th scale, but it
might be possible to replicate an IMSAI front panel with fiber optics,
run them under the floor of the doll house to a hidden Z-80 board
(that could still be done with a lot of SMT to make it small).
I bet someone has done something very similar for one of the larger
model railway scales.
The front panel lights will be easily doable. This time, look at the
*smaller* model railway scales. N gauge (1:150-ish) and Z gauge (1:220)
signalling equipment would be a good place to look. Their three inch
wide signal lamps are comparable to 1/5 inch lamps in your scale.
--
David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david
6304
days inactive
6305
days old
5 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
cclist＠sydex.com -
dave.thearchivist＠gmail.com -
david＠cantrell.org.uk -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
robert＠irrelevant.com -
wh.sudbrink＠verizon.net