PDP-8: (and others) anyone tried NVRAM simulation of hard drives?

From: ben franchuk <bfranchuk_at_jetnet.ab.ca>
Date: Wed Feb 5 18:35:01 2003

Ethan Dicks wrote:

> Perhaps a little bit of both. If I were going to emulate a DF-32,
> that could be done in battery-backed SRAM - 32K words per unit,
> 4 units per CPU. Trivial. The original logic was implemented in
> R-series logic. It wouldn't be hard to do it all in TTL, just a
> bunch of work. The actual storage technology isn't the issue; the
> presentation to the PDP-8 is.

Well the most sensable idea is to make the media modular:
bus interface , I/O module , data media.

{snip}
> There is a period SCSI card for OMNIBUS PDP-8s - it has a 6809
> processor on it to relieve the PDP-8 of the nitty-gritty details
> of how SCSI works. Same idea, slightly newer peripheral hardware.

I think the idea of a processer having about 2000?? transistors
and a 8K core stack, with a i/o card having a cpu with say 68000
transitors and 128kb of memory speaks to me of hardware/software
bloat. ( this does not count the media used even ).
Ben.
Received on Wed Feb 05 2003 - 18:35:01 GMT