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

From: Kevin Handy <kth_at_srv.net>
Date: Wed Feb 5 18:53:01 2003

ben franchuk wrote:

> 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

But, remember, that 8k is 12 bits wide!

>
> 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 - 18:53:01 GMT

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