Mark-8 Minicomputer Kit on E-bay

From: Heinz Wolter <h.wolter_at_sympatico.ca>
Date: Wed Mar 12 17:16:00 2003

From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf_at_siconic.com>

> Point taken but even if you were to build a Mark-1 you'd really only need
> the original issues of Radio-Electronics. You can get those for under
> $200 on eBay or free if you find someone willing to scan the pages. With
> the exception of the 8008, the rest is trivial.

wrong.
the original magazine articles and pcb patterns contained several mistakes.
Parts?- not quite so trivial to find. 8008's go on ebay often - but do they
work?
Though you might salvage a plastic 8008 from an 11/34 or pdp8a (??)
keyboard console, the signetics 8267 and 8263 parts might not be that easy
to
come by. 1101 srams will also be a bit diffcult to find. the rest of the
jellybean
logic may be found by scrounging old boards, but forget Digikey and the
like.

I bought a basic kit- thankfully, the hard to get parts were provided, as
well as scans
of the mag articles including the corrections, and Mark-8 users group
newsletters.
If someone is interested in building boards or wirewrapping- feel free to
contact
me - perhaps we can put the files up somewhere. But for me, it was well
worth
my time and money to get the "modern" kit and not dick around looking for
parts.
Having paid less than 200$ for the basic kit incl pcbs and core chips, this
makes much
more sense to me than paying 200$ for magazines only. If you were building a
totally
modern work alike - an all fpga solution - cpu+rom+ram would be more
interesting
than yet another 8008 using LS/HC TTL and CMOS static rams. 8008 on a PLD
anyone?
H
Received on Wed Mar 12 2003 - 17:16:00 GMT