It's ALIVE!!! (Mark-8)

From: Bill Richman <bill_r_at_inebraska.com>
Date: Thu Mar 7 00:28:22 2002

I bought one of the Mark-8 (8008) board sets from eBay 2 or 3 weeks ago,
scrounged up all the parts, and set to work. It had non-plated-through
holes so almost all the components had to be soldered on both sides of
the board, and there were dozens of vias that had to be soldered in on
each board as well. Did the smoke test with no CPU. No smoke, so I
inserted the CPU, and it works! I found two problems on initial testing.
There was a bad gate in a 7404 which was pulling down one of the data
lines (replaced it), and I had missed a "top bus" jumper from the
address/multiplex board to the memory board which allowed writes to
memory (added a wire). That was it! It's pretty cool - just toggled in a
test program and watched the lights blink as it looped over and over. Now
I have to build a case and find a better power supply than my bench supply
for permanent use, and then I start wire-wrapping an ELF! Whee!
Received on Thu Mar 07 2002 - 00:28:22 GMT