Modifying microcode

[Ethan Dicks]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2018 at 1:08 PM, Robert Armstrong via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>   You forgot the 11/730 and 725.  The KA730 used 2901 bit slicers and the control store was entirely in RAM.  After power on it was a paperweight until the 8085 CFE loaded the microcode.

And one of the big optimizations was to cut a fresh console boot tape
with all the required files in sequential order because the 8085 would
cache the directory block (thankfully!) so it didn't have to rewind
between reading each file.  The stock tape was rather random and could
take 20-30 min of shoeshining.  Putting the files in order brought the
boot times down to 10 min or less of console load - i.e. - essentially
the serial transfer speed of that many kbytes, or close to it.

Today, of course, I would seriously think about a TU58 emulator.
There are several projects.

-ethan