A couple of people have contacted me off-list regarding my boards. Although I am not inclined to do a quantity run to sell complete sets of boards cheaply, if enough people are interested (and "enough" wouldn't have be all that many), I could do a run of a few to help people complete sets with missing / damaged boards, the proviso being that in general folks would not get complete sets of boards, or would provide some documentation of their existing boards. I *really* don't want to flood the market with these boards. People with incomplete board sets should feel free to contact me, preferably with photos of the boards they have. I'd also appreciate knowing the exact size of one of the originals - mine should be very close, but are probably not the exact same size. Note that I also have a motherboard design that I would be willing to make in larger quantities (once I have tested it), in case those who have board sets (complete or incomplete) would want something to plug them into rather than doing the board-to-board wiring thing. The connector spacing is (or at least ought to be) the same as the originals. No limits there. BTW, if I were making a Mark 8 from the originals (which didn't have plated thru-holes), I'd be tempted to use wire wrap sockets and set them 1/4" to 1/2" above the board to solder them in, rather than soldering chips to the board. JRJ

On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote: > Anyone up for an open source hardware community project for > reproduction Mark-8 boards under a CC-A-SA license?

Sounds like a good idea. How close a reproduction do you want? Use original PCB artwork, or redo an approximation in CAD? I could do the latter in Eagle, as time permits. Maybe the TVT also.

I'd definitely want boards with plated through holes.

On 20 August 2013 14:31, Tom Sparks <tom_a_sparks at yahoo.com.au> wrote: That's because it *is* Acorn RISC OS, running on Acorn Archimedes computers and nothing at all to do with SUN's SunOS or the SPARC hardware that the video is talking about and also showing at that point. (It is also not MIPS RISC/os, for what it's worth.) -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

Wasn't this about the same time that BillG was endorsing the i860 CPU as a replacement for the veneered and generated x86?

On 08/20/2013 10:31 AM, Liam Proven wrote: It took me some time to jog my memory as to where I'd seen the squib, but I finally located it in Nearl Margulis' Intel/Osborne-McGraw Hill book "i860 Microprocessor Architecture" (1990, ISBN 0-07-881645-9) on page 5, quoting BillG: "We fully expect to see a whole new generation of high-performance systems built on i860 microprocessor technology that will challenge the current standards in that market. Although projections indicate the first use of the i860 microprocessor will be in the technical computing market, eventually we expect to see application of this chip in the personal computer market...(This) will bring the computation power of supercomputers to PCs." FWIW, the book itself is not particularly a masterwork of clarity and organization. Strangely enough, this book was sitting next to Conklin's "OS/2 Notebook" of the same year in which BillG, in a joint press conference with Cannavino, extols the wonderfulness of Microsoft OS/2 2.0. Of course, we know that BillG was sharpening his dirk to plunge into Cannavino's back while he was making those utterances.