How scarce (valuable) is core for the PDP-8?

From: allisonp_at_world.std.com <(allisonp_at_world.std.com)>
Date: Mon Apr 19 09:05:03 1999

> In my limited experience with the PDP-8E, memory seems very difficult to
> come by. I'd give my eye teeth for a 32k semiconductor board, but both
> semiconductor and core seems to be nowhere.

Core tends to be scarce and 100 for a good or atleast unabused stack may
not be bad. HOWEVER.... core is machine specific and you want to stay
with a coreplane compatable with the existing drivers and sense amps.
Using cores of a differnt size or material will make your life quite hard
as it will take a different half select current and also have a different
slice timing. the latter is important as PDP-8 system timing and memory
timing are pretty well locked to each other.

Unless your doing a restoration, you may consider hiding a semi ram in the
core and fake it. Do however put a battery and powerfail so that it acts
like core.... ;)

Allison
Received on Mon Apr 19 1999 - 09:05:03 BST