Video clips (was Re: modern serial terminal)

[Tim Shoppa]

ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
> I am not a 'normal' computer collector, if such a thing even exists. For 
> one thing I am primarily interested in the hardware design (if I can get 
> a machine running properly so that it boots the normal OS, or runs the 
> ROM software, or..., then I tend to lose interest in it). I am interested 
> in the electronics/engineering aspects, the fact that the devices happen 
> to be programmable computers is secondary to this.
>
> This has several implications. The first, which I think is on-topic, is 
> that I am equally interested in peripherals as CPUs. I want to run my 
> PDP11 with RK05s nad RK07s and RL02s, and... Not an IDE drive pretending 
> to be the above. The design of the servo system in an RK07 is every bit 
> as interesting to me as the processor.

And I'm also interested in peripheral systems... but not so much for
the intracicies of the hardware (although I do find that interesting).
Instead, I try to emphasize the peripherals because:

1. Too many CPU's get rescued sans peripherals. Then someone gets to it
and asks "well, now what?". Emphasize the importance of the peripherals
to actually booting an OS or running an interesting application and maybe
the result will be not peripheral-less CPU's but complete systems.

2. Peripherals are important for media recovery of OS's, applications,
and if we're really lucky, sources.

3. With media recovery and CPU and access to a peripheral, all the
basic prerequisites of writing an emulator are available. Many (most?)
peripherals are not well documented enough to allow emulation of the
peripheral without at least some experimentation.

Tim.