Panelman Update.

[Rod Smallwood]

Hi Guys

              Having established a good stock of panels. I now have got 
a little time to move my PDP-8/i project along a bit.

The front I already had . A kind list member let me have a lights board. 
I built and and tested it

It is compatible with the original /i in form, fit and function.

This means you could attach wires and paddle (Filip Chip Type ) boards 
to it and plug it into a real  /i and it should run.

As I have said before the /i is a wire wrap back plane and loads of flip 
chip boards. It would not be possible to duplicate it.

So modern technology front and center please!  The Raspberry Pi is 
cheap, available and I have one.
I also found a 32 port Pi I/O expansion board that you can have up four 
of  on one Pi.
SimH runs on a Pi  and it does do 8/i emulation.  It looks like SimH is 
written in C.  Not a language
I have used but I'm sure the hundreds of different versions are all very 
good !
Hopefully you can declare and call SimH functions under Python.

  The four 32 port Pi I/O expansion boards I ordered should be here 
to-day or Monday.
They are accessed using the I2C bus from the Raspberry Pi

The switch panel is a bit more of a problem. I'm sure copies of the DEC 
butterfly rocker switch will become available.
in the meantime commonly available rocker switches will suffice for 
development purposes.

Although Oscar multiplexed his lamps I may be able to find out how the 
system signaled it needed to update the lamp display.

Rod Panelman Smallwood


-- 
PDP-8/e PDP-8/f PDP-8/m PDP-8/i
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