Prints for an 11/70

From: Boatman on the River of Suck <vance_at_ikickass.org>
Date: Tue Dec 11 18:09:28 2001

On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Ben Franchuk wrote:

> > I wanted to do it old because I actually own a first-revision PDP-11/70
> > which my father bought brand new back in the mid-70's when it first came
> > out before I was born. It's a really really neat machine with gobs of I/O
> > bandwidth. It's fast too. So it made me think what I might be able to do
> > with modern components and still make it compatible with my 11/70. (FYI,
> > my 11/70 is still working and is still original, down to its fuses and
> > fascia).
>
> Building my 'prehistoric' CPU, I have discovered I am about 5 years
> too late to find TTL. 16 x4 RAM and ALU's are very scarce and never
> produced in the newer families. You may still find stuff in 74Fxx but
> you still are only about 1/2 the power. I am assuming the 11/70 used
> 74Sxx. You can do a lot with FPGA's today but I don't expect a full
> grown PDP-11 will fit in a fpga that is not in a 144 pin TQFP package.
> Funny how the logic is now 'super large' FPGA's and single gate 'glue'
> chips.

Yeah. I wasn't actually trying to build it using any specific technology.
What I am doing is taking the latest and greatest and building a PDP-11
compatible (one that act's *exactly* like an 11/70, but faster). I am
probably not going to be using FPGA's, because I don't think they're yet
making FPGA's the speed I want them to go.

Peace... Sridhar
Received on Tue Dec 11 2001 - 18:09:28 GMT