"new" classics (was Re: Pre-history of Digital Research)

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Sun Mar 21 21:51:03 1999

<I think you'd find some additional interest from others (me at least) for
<modern kits or instruction sets like those to put these kinds of things
<together. I might be able to follow some instructions. I know that I
<couldn't just assemble one like you are now doing... yet. ;)

It's something I'm not into. Publishing designs that can't be built unless
your lucky to have the parts is not a winner. Trying to design something
that most everyone can build is far to time consuming and would represent
design compromizes that would be for the sake of buildability rather than
some specific perfomance. then there is the issue of support.

For example you can't get z280s as production has stopped. Some of the
parts I use are based on my really deep junkbox. I do have two scopes,
logic analyser logic probes, eprom programmers never mind the other tools
like working systems to develop code on.

Also something on that scale requires a lot of hardware to troubleshoot
as initial bringup can include design errors, wiring errors and even a bad
part. That leads me to why the Altair and IMSAI were replaced by AppleII
and TRS80 style machines. Why, they were working out of the box and
users could start coding ideas.

Allison
Received on Sun Mar 21 1999 - 21:51:03 GMT