I want a front panel for my lsi 11 w/switches and lights

On Mar 7, 2016, at 8:30 AM, Paul Birkel <pbirkel at gmail.com> wrote: Sounds like PDP11GUI ... with the glass-interface supplemented by a mechanical one? -----Original Message----- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Noel Chiappa Sent: Monday, March 07, 2016 7:41 AM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Subject: Re: I want a front panel for my lsi 11 w/switches and lights That's going to be a little tricky. The LSI11 obvously doesn't have a hardware interface on/in the CPU which would allow a lot of the functions traditionally found in a front panel (e.g. examining registers, single step, etc). Some of them can be done (e.g. a halt/run switch, which LSI-11's already support), and others could be 'sorta' done - e.g. if the CPU is running, DMA could be used to read/write memory locations. Probably the best way to have an emulated front panel is to build a board that i) emulates the system serial console on the QBUS (i.e. responds to 177560-6), and ii) has a micro or something which uses ODT to emulate the full range of normal console commands, and drives a set of LEDs and switches. E.g. hitting the 'continue' switch when the processor was halted would issue a 'P' command to ODT; when the 'halt' switch is raised, it would read the PC printed when the CPU halted, and display that in LEDs, etc, etc. Sounds like an amusing project for someone. Any takers? :-) Noel