Most used toys, was Re: The late, great TRS-80

[Ethan Dicks]

On 6/26/07, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
>  My most
> used classic machine at the moment is a PDP-8/m; I've carved out a
> permanent place for it on my desk.  It contains an RX8E which is
> connected to a arallel port adapter based on Chuck Dickman's design,
> which is in turn connected to a small x86 SBC running Linux to give
> the 8/m a disk subsystem.

Interesting way to do it.  How "based on" is it?  I know of Chuck's
parallel port adapter, but I'm curious how you've tweaked it.

Is the SBC tucked into the /m or is it external?  Does the SBC host
your disk images locally, or over a network?

Given that an RX8E is a PIO device, it makes me think that it wouldn't
be that hard to come up with an OS/8 handler to treat the 12-bit-input
and output ports on a DKC8AA as a disk interface to an external,
modern machine.  It doesn't help -8/e/f/m owners much, but the DKC8AA
was a standard peripheral on the -8/a, and normally, unless one is
using the output port as a printer port, unused.

Much to think about there...

-ethan