20 Sep
2001
20 Sep
'01
1 a.m.
Jeffrey S. Sharp wrote:
What physical format would this project assume? I can
think of several
right off hand:
* A card that emulates CPU/memory and plugs into the (Uni|Q)bus of
existing machines.
* A box that sits inside a PDP-11 cabinet and replaces the entire bus and
all of the cards.
* A hand-held, battery-powered unit similar to a Game Boy.
It's the third idea that seems the coolest to me. Build it low-power
enough to run on a few batteries. Give it a front panel with switches and
LEDs for the processor and emulated peripherals. Add a serial link (or
maybe even a Zip disk) for transferring files to/from another computer.
It would be the ultimate toy. Just think of all the flavors it could be
made in.
So do it with an Agenda, a Linux powered PDA. The project is completeley
open source so all details of the hardware are available. Its CPU is a
64 bit MIPS architecture, it has an LCD screen with touch panel input,
16Mb of flash and iirc 8Mb RAM at a cost of about USD 250.
-- HBP