Setting up a VAXstation

[Tony Duell]

> (particularly printers) when emulation is used.  Some may feel joy 
> when seeing an original IBM 1620 console typewriter work, but it 
> always struck me as something ready to fly apart at any moment 
> (particularly when returning the carriage).

That is part of the fun. Picking up all the little bits and figuring out 
how to get them back together ;-)

> On the other hand, an emulator can allow you to emulate an exotic 
> peripheral that you might not even be able to find.  It's a knife 
> that cuts both ways.

That depends on whether the priperhal has a sensible mapping to a normal 
PC peripheral. For something like a printer, or a graphics display (even 
a vecotr display), it does. But an interface to a real-world measuring 
instrument probably doesn't. For example I have an interface on one of 
my calculators that reads in 9 decades of BCD digits + exponet, sign, etc 
infromation. Suppose I link that to a frequency counter. I doubt there's 
any common PC peripheral that can measure the frequenct of a 10MHz signal 
and gie 8 or 9 digits. 

The other thing I make a lot of use of are TTL-level parallel interfaces. 
Not printer prots, but things more akin to 'user ports'.  Again there's 
no common, unviersal, PC equivalent.

> Again, pick your "PeeCee" carefully and you can easily wind up with 
> something that not only is more reliable, but much quieter and less 

'As reliable', maybe, but I doubt it could be 'more relaile' than many of 
my classics

-tony