Making vintage computers

[Johnny Billquist]

Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org> wrote:

> On Thursday 28 May 2009, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
>> Doug Jackson wrote:
>>> I would personally consider purchasing a re manufactured Vintage
>>> computer -
>>>
>>> Something running, say,  a 6502, 8080, 8085, or Z80.  Definitely
>>> not interested in anything post 8085.
>>>
>>> Not sure what I would do with an ISA bus.  Not enough pins on my
>>> processor to drive all of the address bits.
>>> Multi CPU systems are probably to far out of the intent of the
>>> Vintage realm for me to consider.
>> There ARE multi-CPU vintage systems.  Some of the CPUs in question
>> were many, many boards full of chips.
> 
> The first (SMP) one that comes to mind is a VAX 8800 (I only have 1/2, 
> aka an 8700), or my VAXstation 3520/3540.
> 
> Of course, there were other non-SMP systems (like the Dual VAX 
> (11/780)), and systems that had multiple CPUs but weren't really 
> dual-processor (DEC Rainbow).

What about PDP-10 systems? Those could be SMP systems. I know of one 
person who ran a 3xKI10 system with TOPS-10. True SMP...
And then we have the PDP-11/74 (up to 4 CPUs), but they are probably 
even harder to find than KI10 systems.

DEC were doing SMP long before they even started spelling "VAX". :-)

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol