On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Vincent Slyngstad < v.slyngs...@frontier.com> wrote:
> Please correct me if I'm talking complete bulls**t. This is all >> new to me. >> > > The only other concern I've had during my thought experiments > along this line related again to the current/power involved. The > device is likely to become difficult to cool if you achieve a 4X > volume reduction. > > Oh, and I guess the nightmare of soldering many thousands of > surface mount discretes and transistors to manufacture such a > thing. > The easy way to do this is to make one board with a small CPLD connected to all the pins and program it to match the logic of the card you are emulating. That way you can have a couple of hundred boards made up for you at a reasonable cost that are all the same but ends up with different functionality. Just stick a label on the handle to tell what the card was programmed as. I don't think you would have heat issues unless you actually tried to use the original circuits. The Straight 8 logic uses pulses for some things instead of levels making it not really compatible with more modern logic. At least not a direct replacement. The later models would be better targets. An I for example might be the best choice. You can't shrink the size of the Front Panel because the switch spacing is already just a little narrow for people with large fingers. It would be better to make it a little oversize in fact. I don't have large hands and it would still be better for me if the spacing was slightly wider. -- Doug Ingraham PDP-8 SN 1175
