Re: building a PDP-8 computer in your kitchen

Alan,

All I can say is WOW...  That's some serious persiverance and patience
to 
do that kinda a work.  I think I would scream, decide I wasn't getting 
paid for this horse droppings and run back to the FPGA a happy man.  But

in terms of low tech... I checked with some of the old time IBM process 
guys... And they were like "How did you think we made chips?"  and the 
famous line... "Chuck, you know that we used looms to make memory back
in 
the 60's don't you?"... Yup that's right... to make memory for your 
"monster" machines back then... they used looms to just weave wires with

some ferris "washers" ect to create a memory bank because it just wasn't

worth going through the hassel of making photoresist etched memory
chips. 
 Well, in this case I agree that a low tech society would be stuck with 
the photoresist.  But right now I can run out and snag an FPGA (assuming

I'm doing a simple enough chip...) relatively "cheaply" for low volume. 

High volume on the other hand is another matter... So for a colony 
looking to fix some high tech equipment... wouldn't they have a lot of 
FPGA's kicking around or equivilients for "hack" repair jobs?  you'd 
think that a decent colony or even a military troop would have tons of 
these fpga's or pics or something equivilent... especially if everything

is computerized.  This would allow for a reasonable repair setup that 
"should" last a long long time.

Thanks again Alan for explaining... I was foolishly envisioning
something 
far more simple...

Chuck

-- 
The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail.
Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for.
					  ~Louis L'Amour
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|Chuck Choukalos | IBM : 1000 River Road   | Phone:802-769-5787 (tie
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|PD Methodology  | Essex Junction, VT 05452| Fax  :802-769-5722 (tie
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