Hi Tom, I've got 4-5 different homebuilts running CUBIX, ranging from the Portable pictured on my web page (integrated keyboard/video, dual disks, "full load" of RAM, several serial ports and other peripheral devices) to really stripped down systems which can be constructed from a (fairly small) handful of parts and using a serial connection for the console. This has been around since the mid-80's and over the years a number of other people have built up CUBIX systems as well. There has been talk of porting it to the CoCo, however I never got into the CoCo enough to bother (too "packaged" for my liking :-), and I am not aware of anyone else who has done so. There is also of course the D6809 simulator (on my site) which will let you run the system on any PC / DOS compatible environment. In response to some interest I posted a bit of information about the CUBIX OS a week or two ago here in the list, search the archives and you should find it (or I can send it to you). To quickly summarize: CUBIX is the software portion of a completely self designed system I did in the 80's. Don't let the "homegrown" origin fool you, It was my main system for several years, and I did offer it as a product. It iis fully mature and well documented. A very brief summary of the features: - Designed to be VERY portable and hardwre independant. Requires no more than a TTY type console and can deal with virtually any disk hardware and media geometry (in fact, you can reconfigure the I/O devices and disk geometry "on the fly" in a running system. Many CUBIX system can be ported simply by patching the hardware dependant initialization and driver portion of the ROM image (no mucking around with OS source code required - although this is also available). - High functionality - main OS is ROM resident (8K) and provides well over 100 system calls/services. Has a full featured file system, command shell and supports "batch" command files. - Decent command interface, somewhat VMSish in feel. Includes a couple dozen utilities and applications including pretty much all the sytem/disk/file management tools you need, several editors, assembler, BASIC, FORTH, Micro-APL, C compiler and even an 8080 simulaltor which I used to quickly port over much of my Altair code when I switched over to this as my main system. - Lots of documentation (user & technical) and a nice little online HELP command which gives all the basic/essential information to use the system. Don't want to waste more bandwidth here as I just posted this information a little while ago. Much more information can be obtained from my site (URL in sig below) - scroll down to "D6809" under "Homebuilts" and you will find lots of info. All of the documentation (.TXT files) is posted directly on the web page, and also included with the simulator (as is the disk images etc.). Highly recommended as a "fun project" if you like the idea of building a functional and unique computer (note: I mean really building, not "putting a PC board in a box"). If you have questions after all that, I am happy to answer them. If there is enough interest, I would also consider putting together a page specifically about CUBIX and building a machine to run it Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

Humm.... Soldering chips on a manufactured PCB (that someone else designed) isn't really "building your own" (although it's a step ahead of what most people today consider as "building a computer"). If you really want the experience, design a system, prototype it and debug it - you will learn TONS more than you would by soldering chips to a board. It's not nearly as hard as you might think (start small). Possibly - Although Cubix was originally designed to be the OS for my main computer, and by that fact is pretty close to what I envisioned. It was however done 25+ years ago, and there is room for improvement. I'd wait until some more people have gotten into it and see what feedback develops. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Vintage computing equipment collector.

Although I have a 29B, I still do most of my "simple" EPROMS (2716-27256) with a little homebrew burner that I also built back in the 80s. It too is based on the 6809 (it's can run standlalone with a keypad or controlled via a host). I have published the design which is available somewhere on my commercial website if you are interested... However, I don't know that I would bother, as EPROMS are a pain in the butt to program due to odd voltages which you must supply/switch - a modern flash chip will do just as nicely and you can program it with TTL level signals. I did a very simple flash device programmer via a PC parallel port (uses little adapters for various flash devices). Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

Brian Wheeler wrote: Was that the CMOS pdp chip or a TTL designed PDP? Use of a EEPROM may be a better idea as I think there are low cost designs that hang off the printer port to burn a eeprom. I think commercial burners run at $399+ but I can't say for sure.

On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 16:19 -0700, woodelf wrote: We used a TTL chip for the ALU, and the rest of the logic was implemented using PAL (or PLD, I don't remember) chips. They're using FPGAs now: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/classes/b441/lab/ I was leaning towards eeprom, since it seems like we were forever baking the logic chips to fix our errors in that class... Brian

Am dinsdag, 13.12.05, um 16:45 Uhr (Europe/Zurich) schrieb dave04a at dunfield.com: A workaround for the floppy dataseparator would be very nice... Jos Dreesen

dave04a at dunfield.com wrote: Well since I am playing with CPLD's I need to know lot about the insides of a computer chip. For me I don't think I could go wire wrap as I don't think they make 84 pin plcc sockets. Did not BYTE have somebody doing a 6809 system. They also had a nice 6502 home brew too, on small cards, I just want source code for a Good C Compiler. I don't think I can port 6809 asm code to my cpu since CPLD design is something like a 6800. 6800 seems more likely. [AC - 18/9 ] accumulator 18 or 9 bits -- bytes are unsigned [DP/SP 18/13] direct page - sp zero filled 13..1 or stack [IX - 18/9 ] index reg [PC - 18 ] program counter Ben alias woodelf

Dave Dunfield wrote: It still is lots of memory for me,because I am using 16k x ( 4+4+1) static memory. Since I miss ordered the 16k x 4 ram, I will have exactly 64k of memory, I plan about 8 to 16k of ram for the OS and 32k to 48k for user programs if I can ever get the homebrew finished. The 8088 is great for com programs -- my favorite dos editor was T.COM a 4k text editor but right now I am using edit and still running a dos box for real work. :) PS One thing I notice you don't have is any Videotext terminals in your vintage equipment. That was a Candian thing for sure.

Warning: I did not top post! There are further responses inline with the reply. ;-) =-=-=-=-= Firstly, I'd like to mention that I've always wanted to build my own homebrew 6809 system... altho I've been thinking of designing my own buss system (around 80 pins or so) so other CPUs could be used if desired. I was thinking of a multi-board system with a 6-7 socket backplane. I want it to be educational to others (read: see-thru Lucite case & lotsa Blinkenlights! ;-) at the same time that I learn from it, too. For a few reasons, S100 is not an option: I want the system smaller / easily portable (I'm guesstimating in inches: 6x6x9, with an external 5V only switcher), and I also want it to be easily buildable by a hobbyist. Trying to dremel an S100 cardedge would seem to be quite a bit of work for not a lot of gain - but square boards with a pair of 40-pin IDE connector (for example) edge-soldered on would be pretty easy to do at home. I do have a question: Are there any 80-100 pin buss structures already in use I could copy that might fit my bill? I'd rather do something that might be compatible with something else out there if it's similar enough to what I want to accomplish. I'm hoping to take lots of pictures & basically make the design free on the web as I do this, mainly to show people if an idiot like me can make a computer, so can you! ;-) Oh, and for the record: Cubix looks *kewl*. ;-) Rumor has it that Scott Stevens may have mentioned these words: And it's never too late for good ideas. ;-) Them's fightin' words. 64K w/OS-9 got me thru High school & my first year of college, before I got my CoCo3 & 128K (later to 512K) but I still had a maximum 64K code space - and that kept me working until the mid-90's. Other than running (crawling) Autocad, my '386 was the 'toy' and my CoCo was the workhorse. Once I got an EISA 486-66 server from my (then current) employer, did I consider the CoCo my secondary machine. Unless you're running Windows. ;-) A few of those microcontrollers have 128K of flash on 'em now. I want my CoCo on a chip! ;-) Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate." SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein zmerch at 30below.com |

On 12/13/2005 at 1:03 PM Roger Merchberger wrote: Maybe not 80-100, but how about STD bus? Cheers, Chuck

The 'Eurocard connector' is probably a DIN41612 connector. The full-size one is 32 pins long by 1, 2 or 3 rows, and there's a half-size one too (16 pins long). All are 0.1" spacing in both directions. They come in solder and wire-wrap versions, and even IIRC, IDC versions to crimp onto ribbon cable. IMHO these are a lot easier to use for prototyping than card edge connectotrs. You don't need to etch and gold-plate a set of fingers on the PSB -tony

Rumor has it that woodelf may have mentioned these words: Same problem as the S100, tho - how do you chisel out an XT board edge connector at home... 40 pins, but I didn't want to limit the design solely for the 6809. I might want to build a 68K board in the future, and for that I'd need more pins. But a 4Mhz Hitachi 6309 *was* made, and clock for clock it was even faster than the 6809, had a hardware divide and some 32-bit operations. Schweet! Due to size restrictions, I wasn't going to wirewrap (except maybe one prototype board, but even that would be temporary until I made a PCB) - not enough board density for a "small" computer. Crappy hardware? I just pulled out my durned-near-20 year old CoCo3 (which at the time was about 35 degrees F) plugged 'er in (yea, it was stupid, but I was in a hurry) and it sparked right up. I posit that machines today are the toys, and the machines of yore were the serious business tools. Yup, and I drooled over the Gimix ads in Hot CoCo and Rainbow as well. Boy howdy would I love to have one of those now. Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on the border of Ontario, Canada. Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | A new truth in advertising slogan SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy... zmerch at 30below.com | ...in oxymoron!"

Roger Merchberger wrote: Umm hacksaw? ------ ---- cut ------ cut I know they can clock @ 3 MHZ ... as for 4 mhz I don't know if you can get any. Also standard 68xx I/O is only 2 MHZ. If you know of faster IO let me know where. I was thinking of the expansion port. Now that was a nice machine, too bad rat-shack never sold them. That was all I had for a computer store. Move to Canada -- here is a comfortable 40 below. :) I think today it is around 30F , just ample to have ice everywhere.