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Build your own PDP 8I, book

Marty

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Hi All;
I just received a book, that I had ordered about a week ago, and it was stated that in it, it had information on building your (my) own PDP 8I..
Needless to say I figured for the price of this book I could take a chance on it, lets just say I paid more for the Shipping than for the Book..
And a Quick look thru it and it goes into much Detail about what you would do do Design a PDP 8I, And there are many tables and listings and flow charts..
And there is enough information in the next Chapter to actually make the machine.. Functionally it says it is the same, it goes about it Differently than DEC did..
After having looked at the book a little closer, there are parts of Schematics, and many block diagrams and flow charts, and much of it is left to the student to do what is not there explicitly, but the information is there..
It is part of a course on Digital Design, and looks well written.. I like the style and after I figure some of his logic symbols and methodology, I think it would be a good exercise for me to do at least on Paper.. Supposedly there are about 125 Ic's for the whole design since there is no busing between boards, it would be on one maybe two boards, not counting the front console, with switches and Led's..
So, what is the title --

The Art of Digital Design An Introduction to Top Down Design (Second Edition) By Franklin Prosser and David E. Winkel

Here is a link for a feel of the book.. http://www.cs.indiana.edu/classes/b441-sjoh/post/ADD-260-271.pdf

THANK YOU Marty
 
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Or you can just use an FPGA and Verilog/VHDL. At this point, I find it hard to see the difference between SSI TTL and programmable devices. The thought process, it would seem, would be the same.
 
Hi All;
Thank You Both for Your comments..
Chuck, that isn't the same.. Yes, I know I could put it into an FPGA, and Spoil the whole thing !!!!
I can't look into the FPGA and follow a signal from point A to point B.. And put in a Ton of Led's to watch the Sequencing and the logic flow of each Instruction.. You can't do that with an FPGA !! I have a friend who is an FPGA Guru and from time to time I help him ( hold the scope leads).. So, I know something about FPGA's but not much.. You sound just like what He would say, and to me it's nowhere near the same..
Just like I know I could Run Simh or put a PDP 11/45 in an FPGA.. But, that's just NOT for me..

THANK YOU Marty
 
Hi All;
Thank You Both for Your comments..
Chuck, that isn't the same.. Yes, I know I could put it into an FPGA, and Spoil the whole thing !!!!
I can't look into the FPGA and follow a signal from point A to point B.. And put in a Ton of Led's to watch the Sequencing and the logic flow of each Instruction.. You can't do that with an FPGA !! I have a friend who is an FPGA Guru and from time to time I help him ( hold the scope leads).. So, I know something about FPGA's but not much.. You sound just like what He would say, and to me it's nowhere near the same..
Just like I know I could Run Simh or put a PDP 11/45 in an FPGA.. But, that's just NOT for me..

THANK YOU Marty

I agree it can be done, but is not the same (to me anyway). Simh is a nice way to set up a system by configuring it
since I don't have a tape drive to boot a system to build it on the real hardware. So I do this via Simh and then
dump to my real pdp-11. I suppose if I didn't have the real thing an FPGA would be better than nothing.
 
I think the PDP-8 core was one of the first complete CPU designs for FPGA--I suspect that there's at least half a dozen out there. I know that there are a couple FPGA PDP-11 designs, which to my way of thinking is a far more usable machine.

But I can appreciate the desire to put together something from low-level parts. What does the book's design do for I/O?
 
Or you can just use an FPGA and Verilog/VHDL. At this point, I find it hard to see the difference between SSI TTL and programmable devices. The thought process, it would seem, would be the same.

An FPGA might be made to act like a PDP8, but it will never be a PDP8 in ways that matter to those who love vintage hardware any more than a Plymouth Prowler will ever be a street rod in the eyes of someone who loves the real deal.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't accept the FPGA or the Prowler as a gift. >.<

Well, maybe the prowler long enough to find some fool to sell it to. ;-)
 
An FPGA might be made to act like a PDP8, but it will never be a PDP8 in ways that matter to those who love vintage hardware any more than a Plymouth Prowler will ever be a street rod in the eyes of someone who loves the real deal.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't accept the FPGA or the Prowler as a gift. >.<

Well, maybe the prowler long enough to find some fool to sell it to. ;-)


I love Vintage Hardware but there is no way I will ever be able to afford a real PDP-8, even my SBC6120 was a stretch, but I do like it. I think a a gate level, cycle accurate, implementation of a straight-8 would be something worth having..
 
Hi All;
Well, Thank You to everyone for their Input, on this..

Chuck, Thanks for asking.. "" What does the book's design do for I/O? "" They have a design for a Serial I/O, I think they use a UART, but there is in another chapter a project for doing Your own Parallel to Serial converter..
I am seeing what IC's I have to start the project off, I will need to make some subs, like the are using 74LS378's or 74LS379's for their enabled registers, and I don't have any, so I will use some 74LS377's instead.. It needs a twelve bit register and the 74LS378 has six in it, so two are needed, and by my using a 74LS377 which has 8 registers, I can use six of these and use two like they will..
THANK YOU Marty
 
Marty,

Thank you for the tip! I picked up a used copy just now for a trivial sum. It should be here in a few days. I am very interested to see the design - especially the memory. Did the author use SRAM?

Lou
 
Hi All;
Lou, Thank You, for getting the book, Now someone who Knows something about PDP 8's can review the Book and Really say if it is any good..

"" Did the author use SRAM? "" Yes, He is using 6147's twelve of them, I think they are the same as a 2147.. But, I haven't checked that out for sure.. I think You will be Suprised, at what little He says about it..
Unfortunately, As near as I can tell The Professor who did this is in His 80's.. So, I am not going to ask Him for more information.. I have thought of asking their Computer Science Department, if they have any information..
Lou, even with out that information, the rest of what He spells out I think is worth having the book.. Especially if You are into 8's..
I have started to lay out part of my ALU on my wirewrap Board, and building at least some of it..

THANK YOU Marty
 
Hi All;
Chuck, Thanks for sharing.. "" I wonder if what I have in my hellbox is an ECL implementation of a PDP-8. Wire-wrap with Eurocard connectors; definite 12-bit word. ""
You would be the only one who can tell us.. I am not sure what a hellbox is, but an ECL PDP 8 implementation would be interesting !!

THANK YOU Marty
 
Hi All;
I see another decision has been made for me, I have a Board that I had wrapped for use in Debugging my PDP 11/40, but since I no longer have my 11/40..
I can re-purpose it for this project.. It's a different 4K memory chip, it is a 2114 instead of a 2147.. And its 14 bits wide, instead of 12 bits wide, I will need to make some changes to it, in the Read and Write circuitry, but otherwise it should work just fine..
THANK YOU Marty
 
It'd be pretty difficult figuring out this packed-with-ECL board, but looking at it, I don't hink it's a PDP-8; it's got, among the forest of 10K series ECL 8 MB7072E packages, which are 4x256 ECL RAMs, grouped in 2 sections of 4. This would probably make this a 16-bit implementation of something, but I don't know what. What's strange is that part of the lot was a memory board with 96 IMS1400 16Kx1 SRAMs, arranged in 2 banks of 48. But the interface is TTL, not ECL. So probably no relation between the two.

A "hellbox" is where one puts stuff like this in the hope that one day they may come in handy. Given that they're wire-wrap, the gold bugs would probably be after them now.
 
Chuck,

Can you post some pics of this.

After yesterdays adventures with a Creed teleprinter I think I have a whole hell room........

ps I also ordered copy of book, but from UK supplier.
 
ps I also ordered copy of book, but from UK supplier.

Note that there are two editions, and they are substantially different. The first edition uses a discrete-logic implementation of the state-machine; the second uses microcode. There are other differences between the editions as the cost-effective available technology shifted between 1980 and 1987.

It sounds like Marty has the first edition; not sure about others.

Caveat Emptor :->.
 
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