Religion warning: I was a mainframer. Since at any practical budget, they can only be emulated, for small computers, I would like pure hardware as much as possible, and what did or could have existed (no fpga).
What I wish somebody would create is an S-100 card (probably with a raspberry pie daughter running simulation for future upgradeability) that, initially emulates a complete Byte-8 or Imsai computer including memory and disk images on sdc cards, 24x40 display on an HDMI display and USB keyboard. serial and parallel ports emulated. software upgrades could be: -- a full web page with clickable front panels and ascii terminals. -- support other CPU cards, e.g. 8088, 68000, 6502, etc but the big thing: bidirectional ports on all S-100 data lines. go into supervisory mode and define --this memory range go to the s-100 bus so you can get that old 8k memory card working. --this io range go to s-100 bus to get the old printer interface, etc going --eventually down to just the CPU, pull this new card, put in old CPU and you have an original. --possibly reverse also, so would be super board emulating memory, disk, etc for an original CPU card. AND maybe headers to connect to ribbon cables to do the same functions to recover other busses: apple, TRS-80, OSI, unibus, isa, eisa, s-bus <pre>--Carey</pre> > On 02/27/2024 2:13 PM CST Doug McIntyre via cctalk <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > On Tue, Feb 27, 2024 at 11:10:34AM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: > > PS: With low cost Chinese PCB's and vintage parts, why are people not > > building real hardware replica's of interesting machines. > > But they are.. > I can't tell what you'd find interesting since the list is pretty wide. > > I've got an Apple I replica board that someday I intend to populate and get > running. > > You've got the ReAmiga project producing new boards for using up old parts on > broken boards. > https://www.reamiga.info/?page_id=36 > > One thing that I find interesting (although I'd never do it), is a board to > emulate > a 68000 CPU at much higher speeds running barebones emulator on a Raspberry > Pi. > Aimed at Amiga A1200 again. > https://wiki.amiga.org/index.php?title=Pistorm32-Lite > > I've put together my IMSAI 8080 frontpanel kit, with the CPU emulated on an > ESP32. > https://thehighnibble.com/imsai8080/ > > Or they are about to ship out the PiDP-10 blinkenlights kits > https://obsolescence.dev/pidp10.html > The CPU again emulated on a RaPi, but all new boards and plastic for the > console kit > I'm not sure if anybody has ever thought about making flipchip boards > themselves though. > Although they might have been.. > https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/a-general-purpose-flip-chip-adapter-board-worth-doing.1228572/
