From: berdpee@ami.com.au Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Like to see more action. Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 22:23:57 GMT Message-ID: <3c0410b3.5097456@news.ami.com.au> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.21/32.243 NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.55.31.107 X-Trace: 28 Nov 2001 06:20:07 +0800, 203.55.31.107 Lines: 16 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!HSNX.atgi.net!newsfeed.iinet.net.au!nntp.waia.asn.au!usenet.per.paradox.net.au!203.55.31.107 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7818 The idea of building a PDP-10 using an FPGA is probably the best step forward in computing in 2001. The next move is for the TOP LINE programmers in this group to co-operate together to develop the software necessary to interface those devices to the FPGA-10 which were not in common use when the KI-10 was current. To name a few: VGA monitors Keyboards SCSI hard drives Modems LANs Etc......etc. I wish I had the skills necessary and the time to help. aeolus ###### From: Ben Franchuk Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 17:07:47 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <3C042AD3.9047C099@jetnet.ab.ca> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <3c0410b3.5097456@news.ami.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 34 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!194.25.134.126.MISMATCH!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!isdnet!sn-xit-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7815 berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: > > The idea of building a PDP-10 using an FPGA is probably the best step > forward in computing in 2001. 2002 I suspect... the end of the century is coming on fast. > The next move is for the TOP LINE > programmers in this group to co-operate together to develop the > software necessary to interface those devices to the FPGA-10 which > were not in common use when the KI-10 was current. To name a few: > VGA monitors > Keyboards Well that would come under a terminal emulator. While a PC will work here - say a old 486 - that to me is over kill. Bring back the "Dumb Terminals". :) > SCSI hard drives A good generic drive interface would be useful here. Did the PDP-10 handle 8 bit i/o well? > Modems > LANs > Etc......etc. Needed to put all the 10 clones on the internet. > I wish I had the skills necessary and the time to help. > aeolus So do I. Mind you with the emulators on the fast PC's would a FPGA keep up? - Ben Franchuk --- Pre-historic Cpu's -- www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html ###### Message-ID: <3C040F6E.63C4F430@trailing-edge.com> Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 22:10:54 -0400 From: Tim Shoppa Organization: Trailing Edge Technology X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03Gold (X11; I; OpenVMS V7.2 AlphaServer 1200 5/533 4MB) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. References: <3c0410b3.5097456@news.ami.com.au> <3C042AD3.9047C099@jetnet.ab.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 11 NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.73.218.130 X-Trace: 1006917048 reader2.ash.ops.us.uu.net 13609 63.73.218.130 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!194.25.134.126.MISMATCH!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!colt.net!newspeer.clara.net!news.clara.net!news2.euro.net!uunet!ash.uu.net!spool0900.news.uu.net!reader0902.news.uu.net!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7835 Ben Franchuk wrote: > > berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: > > SCSI hard drives > A good generic drive interface would be useful here. > Did the PDP-10 handle 8 bit i/o well? A non-issue. Re-low-level-format your drive to 576 bytes/sector and you're in fat city. Tim. ###### From: klh@panix.com (Ken Harrenstien) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. Date: 28 Nov 2001 06:28:45 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Lines: 69 Sender: Ken Harrenstien Message-ID: <9u2hpd$771$1@panix3.panix.com> References: <3c0410b3.5097456@news.ami.com.au> <3C042AD3.9047C099@jetnet.ab.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 1006946925 27071 166.84.1.3 (28 Nov 2001 11:28:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Nov 2001 11:28:45 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed.nextra.ch!news.nextra.ch!nextra.at!newsfeed4.cidera.com!newsfeed1.cidera.com!Cidera!netnews.com!xfer02.netnews.com!news.voicenet.com!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!panix!news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7819 I suspect I will regret stepping in here, but if this topic is still coming up a reality check may be in order. In article <3C042AD3.9047C099@jetnet.ab.ca>, Ben Franchuk wrote: >berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: >> The idea of building a PDP-10 using an FPGA is probably the best step >> forward in computing in 2001. Nope. >> I wish I had the skills necessary and the time to help. >> aeolus >So do I. Mind you with the emulators on the fast PC's >would a FPGA keep up? Nope. There are commercial emulators built out of FPGAs that are used to help debug new microprocessor designs. They are very expensive, and run MUCH slower than the real thing, even though in each cycle they are doing extremely simple pipeline stages. Certainly you might have a chance of surpassing 1980s technology, but current microprocessors are so far out on the leading edge in terms of complexity, density, and clocking that everything else has been left far behind. The last two hardware PDP-10 clones I'm aware of, the SC-40 and XKL-1, were reportedly only 5x and 2x KL speed, and there were no follow-ons. This should give you an idea how very difficult/expensive it is to design and implement special-purpose hardware on this scale. So, forget performance. In my opinion the only valid reason to try implementing a PDP-10 using FPGAs, or any technology for that matter, would be for fun or a classroom exercise... to see if one technique is easier or more elegant than another. And where fun is concerned, I think the direction you need to be going is up, not down. Use some more powerful language or design tools to describe a PDP-10 more quickly and economically than the current crop of emulators, and you'll advance the state of the art. But going down you are taking a very big risk that you'll get stuck in useless details (or even worse, produce something that nobody else will use). There are so many issues that would need to be addressed for a FPGA-10 to be useful that I don't know where to start. This seems to come up again and again. People get seduced by the seeming simplicity of the wonderful PDP-10 instruction set and can't help but think how easy it would be to implement it in this or in that -- in hardware, Verilog, microcode, or assembler, etc -- and they forget that it looks easy because it's the 5-10% of the implementation that is, in fact, the easy part! The vast bulk of the work involves emulating all the messy auxiliary hardware and devices, which is neither fun nor easy. (If it were easy, you'd think there would be a few more emulators out there.) I'd rather see effort, if there is any, put into fixing monitor software (removing the race conditions that restrict device speeds, supporting more physical address bits, upgrading obsolete TCP/IP and server code, and so on -- porting XKL's version of TOPS-20 would be a good start). This would dovetail nicely with Lars' GCC port. On the other hand, I realize there are people who find happiness in spending years of their life carving little bits of wood and casting tiny spikes to build 17th-century model galleons plank by plank in perfect detail. So if anyone decides to build a PDP-10 out of, say, Tinkertoys, go ahead; I'll buy a ticket to visit that 10th wonder of the world when it's done! --Ken ###### From: Lars Brinkhoff Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. Date: 28 Nov 2001 13:01:24 +0100 Organization: nocrew Lines: 26 Message-ID: <85n117w1d7.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <3c0410b3.5097456@news.ami.com.au> <3C042AD3.9047C099@jetnet.ab.ca> <9u2hpd$771$1@panix3.panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: junk.nocrew.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: yggdrasil.utfors.se 1006948907 27469 212.73.17.42 (28 Nov 2001 12:01:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@utfors.se NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Nov 2001 12:01:47 GMT User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!194.74.65.73.MISMATCH!btnet-peer0!btnet!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!diablo.netcom.net.uk!netcom.net.uk!news1.ebone.net!news.ebone.net!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news.utfors.se!unknown!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7829 klh@panix.com (Ken Harrenstien) writes: > I'd rather see effort, if there is any, put into fixing monitor > software (removing the race conditions that restrict device speeds, > supporting more physical address bits, As for more virtual address bits, as far as I know, there has been three processors with support for a full 30-bit virtual address space: KC10 aka Jupiter, the SC-40 processor, and XKL-1. The XKL-1 is well documented, but are any details about the memory management hardware in the other two available? > This would dovetail nicely with Lars' GCC port. The reason I bring this up is that both GCC itself and the modern programs that would possibly be available for compilation with GCC are quite large (some would even say bloated) and could be hampered by the 23-bit address space of a KL10 model B. > porting XKL's version of TOPS-20 would be a good start I would guess that XKL would be willing to give out their TOPS-20 sources, but has anyone checked? -- Lars Brinkhoff http://lars.nocrew.org/ Linux, GCC, PDP-10 Brinkhoff Consulting http://www.brinkhoff.se/ programming ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!not-for-mail From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. Date: 28 Nov 2001 18:27:34 +0100 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 19 Message-ID: <6ud722bybd.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: <3c0410b3.5097456@news.ami.com.au> <3C042AD3.9047C099@jetnet.ab.ca> <3C040F6E.63C4F430@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: chonsp.franklin.ch X-Trace: chonsp.franklin.ch 1006968454 693 10.0.3.2 (28 Nov 2001 17:27:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@chonsp.franklin.ch NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Nov 2001 17:27:34 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7857 Tim Shoppa writes: > Ben Franchuk wrote: > > > > berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: > > > SCSI hard drives > > A good generic drive interface would be useful here. > > Did the PDP-10 handle 8 bit i/o well? > > A non-issue. Re-low-level-format your drive to 576 bytes/sector > and you're in fat city. Modern EIDE and SCSI disks will do that? -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ Hacker, Unix Guru, El Eng HTL/BSc, Sysadmin, Archer, Roleplayer - Intellectual Property is Intellectual Robbery ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!not-for-mail From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. Date: 28 Nov 2001 19:07:12 +0100 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 126 Message-ID: <6uadx6bwhb.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: <3c0410b3.5097456@news.ami.com.au> <3C042AD3.9047C099@jetnet.ab.ca> <9u2hpd$771$1@panix3.panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: chonsp.franklin.ch X-Trace: chonsp.franklin.ch 1006970832 759 10.0.3.2 (28 Nov 2001 18:07:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@chonsp.franklin.ch NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Nov 2001 18:07:12 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7858 klh@panix.com (Ken Harrenstien) writes: > Ben Franchuk wrote: > >So do I. Mind you with the emulators on the fast PC's > >would a FPGA keep up? > > There are commercial emulators built out of FPGAs that are used to > help debug new microprocessor designs. They are very expensive, and run > MUCH slower than the real thing, even though in each cycle they are > doing extremely simple pipeline stages. Warning: these simulation systems are fighting 2 big problems: - they need to provide the amount of logic that will be sold commercially in 1 or 2 years. FPGAs OTOH have about 2 generations (2 * 3 years, 4^2 logic density) less than the same generation commercial chips. So such simulators need about 32 FPGAs, with many _slow_ connections between them. That kills their speed - they need to provide readout for the tests going on in them. That also bottlenecks the entire process and slows it further For the FPGA 10s we are discussion here, we need to look at what happens at 1 FPGA per processor level. Then we can get up to about the performance of an 6 year old commercial CPU. Comparison should therefore be: does the emulator burn up more percent CPU power than CPUs have grown in speed in 6 years. So for today compare an 2001 FPGA running at 1995 Intel speed vs 2001 Intel speed losing X% power to TS-10/Simh/KLH-10. I would estimate the FPGA to be between equal to 3 times faster. > Certainly you might have a > chance of surpassing 1980s technology, I expect my small simple XC2S200 to be capable of equaling 486-50. With an XCV3200E I would aim for PentiumII. Actually designer/programmer time is far more limiting than FPGA power. > but current microprocessors are > so far out on the leading edge in terms of complexity, density, and > clocking that everything else has been left far behind. So are the modern FPGAs. Using the most advances SRAM technologies/ densities. The stuff that gives you 64MBit SRAMs (and 265MBit DRAMs). Example: XCV3200E is now 2 years old. It has 104x156 logic cells of each ca 18x38x7 transistors (=77.6 mio). Add to that 208 BRAMs of 4kx6 transistors (=5.1). That makes present CPUs with their 30 mio look harmless. OK, it costs a "mere" $3000 or so. Now take an 1:16 usable:actual transistor ratio for logic and you are at 4.85 mio transistor equivalent. 486 was 1.08 mio, Pentium was 3.3 or 3.7, Pentium Pro was 5.5, Pentium II is an Pro with 2nd level cache on chip (and them XCV3200E BRAMs do give you 104kByte). So given enough designer time (a really big "if" with hobbyists) an FPGA can outrun any emulator. > The last two hardware PDP-10 clones I'm aware of, the SC-40 and XKL-1, > were reportedly only 5x and 2x KL speed, SC-40 was AFAIK an discrete hardware design, just like the failled KC-10 at DEC. Basically an technology that was past its "best before" date. DEC put the 11 into 4 chips (F11 processor and so on) in the early 1970s the 10 should have been designed as micro from 1975 on. Even IBM switched its S/390 to micros in early 1990s. XKL was 2 XC4013 FPGA chips. Hopelessly slow and _small_ by todays standards. A mere 24x24 cells (each) and that even only half size ones. Thats 1/56 of an XCV3200E (and 1/16 of the XC2S200 I am using). Also XKL was microcoded (because no space?), not a modern pipelined hardwired logic design, which costed it dearly in speed. > and there were no follow-ons. > This should give you an idea how very difficult/expensive it is to > design and implement special-purpose hardware on this scale. Or more likely simply not commerially interesting in XKLs percieved market? > There are so many issues that would need to be addressed for a FPGA-10 > to be useful that I don't know where to start. Well it would be nice to hear them :-). > forget that it looks easy because it's the 5-10% of the implementation > that is, in fact, the easy part! The vast bulk of the work involves > emulating all the messy auxiliary hardware and devices, which is Sure. The CPU is only part of an (DEC)system. > neither fun nor easy. (If it were easy, you'd think there would be a > few more emulators out there.) Fun: yes. Difficult: not more then the CPU. A lot of work: yes. > I'd rather see effort, if there is any, put into fixing monitor > software (removing the race conditions that restrict device speeds, That is for someone else to do. Any budding TWs here? > supporting more physical address bits, 30bit is defined, and was in XKL. > server code, and so on -- porting XKL's version of TOPS-20 would be a > good start). This would dovetail nicely with Lars' GCC port. Sure. That will be the main reason to do >18bit addressing. -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ Hacker, Unix Guru, El Eng HTL/BSc, Sysadmin, Archer, Roleplayer - Intellectual Property is Intellectual Robbery ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!not-for-mail From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. Date: 28 Nov 2001 19:14:53 +0100 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 61 Message-ID: <6u7ksabw4i.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: <3c0410b3.5097456@news.ami.com.au> <3C042AD3.9047C099@jetnet.ab.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: chonsp.franklin.ch X-Trace: chonsp.franklin.ch 1006971293 759 10.0.3.2 (28 Nov 2001 18:14:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@chonsp.franklin.ch NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Nov 2001 18:14:53 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7859 Sorry Ben for the double copy mail/news. Wrong button :-) Ben Franchuk writes: > berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: > > > > software necessary to interface those devices to the FPGA-10 which > > were not in common use when the KI-10 was current. To name a few: > > VGA monitors > > Keyboards > > Well that would come under a terminal emulator. Yes, that is terminal. Implement RS232 with an terminal bihind it, using VGA and PS/2 keyboard. Then add more memory, bitmap mode, colour, mouse (as in VT240), windowing. Windowing will require making software aware of terminal resizes, most likely per escape sequences. > While a PC will > work here - say a old 486 - that to me is over kill. Bring back > the "Dumb Terminals". :) I have an original VT100 and an VT220. But an good terminal is on the list of things to implement. > > SCSI hard drives > A good generic drive interface would be useful here. HDs appear simply as an large number of sectors. Spread 128 36bit words to each 8 8bit bytes and so fill 2 512byte sectors. Then pretend to be an (or multiple) RP-sometings or RM-somethings connected to an Massbus. > > Modems Existed on the originals. Just implement RS232. > > LANs Existed as NIA20 for Ethernet. > Needed to put all the 10 clones on the internet. Of course, where else to host ones PDP-10 related website? > So do I. Mind you with the emulators on the fast PC's > would a FPGA keep up? See reply to Ken. -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ Hacker, Unix Guru, El Eng HTL/BSc, Sysadmin, Archer, Roleplayer - Intellectual Property is Intellectual Robbery ###### From: Ben Franchuk Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 01:45:24 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <3C04A424.AB1F30F3@jetnet.ab.ca> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <3c0410b3.5097456@news.ami.com.au> <3C042AD3.9047C099@jetnet.ab.ca> <9u2hpd$771$1@panix3.panix.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 87 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.bme.hu!andromeda.datanet.hu!newsfeed.gamma.ru!Gamma.RU!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!colt.net!pop-news-1.colt-telecom.nl!newsgate.cistron.nl!newsfeed.online.be!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7861 Ken Harrenstien wrote: > > I suspect I will regret stepping in here, but if this topic is still > coming up a reality check may be in order. > There are commercial emulators built out of FPGAs that are used to > help debug new microprocessor designs. They are very expensive, and run > MUCH slower than the real thing, even though in each cycle they are > doing extremely simple pipeline stages. Certainly you might have a > chance of surpassing 1980s technology, but current microprocessors are > so far out on the leading edge in terms of complexity, density, and > clocking that everything else has been left far behind. I don't expect many people here are wanting a PDP-10 that fast. (I could be wrong). A small box with a FPGA cpu may not be as fast as the newest chips but the whole point of FGPA is you trade ease of design for speed. It is memory and I/O that are the real speed problems.( Having done a FPGA cpu - 12/24 bits I am now looking for a floppy disk controller -- nobody makes them. I have found one or two multifunction ones for PC clones but but real I/O sucks even on the new chips.) This is where you will find FPGA's handling messy I/O. > The last two hardware PDP-10 clones I'm aware of, the SC-40 and XKL-1, > were reportedly only 5x and 2x KL speed, and there were no follow-ons. > This should give you an idea how very difficult/expensive it is to > design and implement special-purpose hardware on this scale. But are not the FPGA's old slow chips compared with today. > So, forget performance. In my opinion the only valid reason to try > implementing a PDP-10 using FPGAs, or any technology for that matter, > would be for fun or a classroom exercise... to see if one technique is > easier or more elegant than another. And keep it alive as real hardware, TTL is not easy to find. > And where fun is concerned, I think the direction you need to be going > is up, not down. Use some more powerful language or design tools to > describe a PDP-10 more quickly and economically than the current crop > of emulators, and you'll advance the state of the art. But going down > you are taking a very big risk that you'll get stuck in useless > details (or even worse, produce something that nobody else will use). > There are so many issues that would need to be addressed for a FPGA-10 > to be useful that I don't know where to start. Since when is state of the art always the best thing? Bloat ware looks to be the current state of the art. > This seems to come up again and again. People get seduced by the > seeming simplicity of the wonderful PDP-10 instruction set and can't > help but think how easy it would be to implement it in this or in that > -- in hardware, Verilog, microcode, or assembler, etc -- and they > forget that it looks easy because it's the 5-10% of the implementation > that is, in fact, the easy part! The vast bulk of the work involves > emulating all the messy auxiliary hardware and devices, which is > neither fun nor easy. (If it were easy, you'd think there would be a > few more emulators out there.) That is true, but I always thought the problem with was most I/O devices and hardware was all closed source. It is hard to copy something with no docs. > > I'd rather see effort, if there is any, put into fixing monitor > software (removing the race conditions that restrict device speeds, > supporting more physical address bits, upgrading obsolete TCP/IP and > server code, and so on -- porting XKL's version of TOPS-20 would be a > good start). This would dovetail nicely with Lars' GCC port. True, keeping software current is good. > On the other hand, I realize there are people who find happiness in > spending years of their life carving little bits of wood and casting > tiny spikes to build 17th-century model galleons plank by plank in > perfect detail. So if anyone decides to build a PDP-10 out of, say, > Tinkertoys, go ahead; I'll buy a ticket to visit that 10th wonder of > the world when it's done! I think it is important to keep the REAL HARDWARE were ever possible. A emulator needs real tape drives,real blinking lights, real TTY's to get the feel of the old machines. If you want a NEW machine, design a whole NEW 36/9 bit processor. Use the best ideas of the PDP's, CISC's and RISC's. It may not be a 10 but it can't be worse than the new crop of 64 bit processors. > --Ken -- Ben Franchuk --- Pre-historic Cpu's -- www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html ###### From: Ben Franchuk Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 03:35:14 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <3C04BDE2.D22C7A8B@jetnet.ab.ca> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <3C04A424.AB1F30F3@jetnet.ab.ca> <9u38i3$mfq$1@spies.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 21 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!195.158.233.21.MISMATCH!news1.ebone.net!news.ebone.net!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!204.71.34.15!news-out.cwix.com!newsfeed.cwix.com!sjc-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7862 Al Kossow wrote: > > From article <3C04A424.AB1F30F3@jetnet.ab.ca>, by Ben Franchuk : > > > I am now looking > > for a floppy disk controller -- nobody makes them. > > Pull an NEC 765 off an old XT floppy controller board. > > It's not like you're going to be buying thousands of them. I don't have a XT floppy card!!!! I sold my XT years ago. :( I was looking around already see if any body local has a XT card, with a chip that is not soldered in. Any way I would rather get newer floppy chip with a built in data separator. Anyway I am looking at using a WD279X chip. -- Ben Franchuk --- Pre-historic Cpu's -- www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html ###### From: aek@spies.com (Al Kossow) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. Date: 28 Nov 2001 09:57:23 -0800 Organization: Spies In The Wire Lines: 10 Message-ID: <9u38i3$mfq$1@spies.com> References: <3C04A424.AB1F30F3@jetnet.ab.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: spies.com X-Trace: 28 Nov 2001 10:00:38 -0800, spies.com Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!news.spies.com!localhost!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7867 From article <3C04A424.AB1F30F3@jetnet.ab.ca>, by Ben Franchuk : > I am now looking > for a floppy disk controller -- nobody makes them. Pull an NEC 765 off an old XT floppy controller board. It's not like you're going to be buying thousands of them. ###### From: Rich Alderson Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Like to see more action. Date: 29 Nov 2001 22:37:40 -0500 Organization: Systems Administration, XKL LLC, Redmond WA 98052 Lines: 13 Sender: alderson+news@panix2.panix.com Message-ID: References: <3c0410b3.5097456@news.ami.com.au> <3C042AD3.9047C099@jetnet.ab.ca> <6u7ksabw4i.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 1007091460 14875 166.84.1.2 (30 Nov 2001 03:37:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Nov 2001 03:37:40 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.7 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!194.25.134.126.MISMATCH!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!144.212.100.101!newsfeed.mathworks.com!panix!news.panix.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:7883 Neil Franklin writes: >>> LANs > Existed as NIA20 for Ethernet. And for years before the NIA20 existed, as the MEIS from Stanford and 'cisco. (That's the MASSBUSS-Ethernet Interface Subsystem.) The XNI-1 on the Toad-1 system works like 4 MEIS's, not NIA20's. -- Rich Alderson alderson+news@panix.com "You get what anybody gets. You get a lifetime." --Death, of the Endless