I want a front panel for my lsi 11 w/switches and lights

[Richard Cini]

Does PDP11GUI have blinkenlights? I use GUI for my Heath H11 and it works great but I do like blinkenlights.

Rich


Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 7, 2016, at 8:30 AM, Paul Birkel <pbirkel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Sounds like PDP11GUI ... with the glass-interface supplemented by a
> mechanical one?
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Noel
> Chiappa
> Sent: Monday, March 07, 2016 7:41 AM
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
> Subject: Re: I want a front panel for my lsi 11 w/switches and lights
> 
>> From: Ed Sharpe
> 
>> I want a front panel  for  my lsi 11  w/switches and  lights!
> 
> That's going to be a little tricky. The LSI11 obvously doesn't have a
> hardware interface on/in the CPU which would allow a lot of the functions
> traditionally found in a front panel (e.g. examining registers, single step,
> etc).
> 
> Some of them can be done (e.g. a halt/run switch, which LSI-11's already
> support), and others could be 'sorta' done - e.g. if the CPU is running, DMA
> could be used to read/write memory locations.
> 
> Probably the best way to have an emulated front panel is to build a board
> that i) emulates the system serial console on the QBUS (i.e. responds to
> 177560-6), and ii) has a micro or something which uses ODT to emulate the
> full range of normal console commands, and drives a set of LEDs and
> switches.
> 
> E.g. hitting the 'continue' switch when the processor was halted would issue
> a 'P' command to ODT; when the 'halt' switch is raised, it would read the PC
> printed when the CPU halted, and display that in LEDs, etc, etc.
> 
> Sounds like an amusing project for someone. Any takers? :-)
> 
>    Noel
>