[Coco] What are you tankful for this Thanksgiving?

[Neil Cherry]

On 11/22/18 11:29 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Thursday 22 November 2018 09:10:09 Neil Cherry wrote:
> 
>> On 11/22/18 12:13 AM, Aaron Davis via Coco wrote:
>>> i blame myself for starting your 1802 habbit.
>>> --------------------------------------------
>>> On Wed, 11/21/18, Melanie and John Mark Mobley
>>> <johnmarkmelanie at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>    Subject: [Coco] What are you tankful for this Thanksgiving?
>>>    To: coco at maltedmedia.com
>>>    Date: Wednesday, November 21, 2018, 4:55 PM
>>>
>>>
>>>    I am also thankful for the RCA 1802
>>>    microcontroller.
>>>    I am running the Emma 02 emulator for
>>>    the 1802 "Membership Card".
>>
>> I have half of a very odd 1802 system called a Dage MC-3. I managed
>> to dig up the 1992 Radio Electroncs articles on it. But while playing
>> I wanted to use an emulator since I'd not worked with the 1802 before.
>>
>> I found a Javascript COSMAC ELF emulator that was broken, told the
>> author and he responded: "No it wasn't" (???) So I copied it down and
>> went about patching it up. I put it here and at the moment I can't
>> recall how to use it.
>>
>> https://ushomeautomation.com/Projects/SimElf++/index.html
>>
> Thats a CosMac Elf?  Looks almost homemade.  The CosMac Super Elf I used
> at KRCR-tv was a made pcb, and had a 6 digit display, so both the
> address and the data at that address were displayed. Had a space at the
> top edge for an s-100 socket to be soldered in and a hex keypad with 4
> extra keys. This board probably doesn't have some of the functions in
> hdwe that the emulator expects to be present.

I think that's an image of the DIY from the Radio Electronics (Popular
Electronics?) article from the 70's. I know the VCF (museum) in Wall NJ
has a couple of different 1802 systems. I think one of them looks similar.

https://wikivisually.com/wiki/COSMAC_ELF

>> It works pretty well and I'll probably revisit it at some later date
>> to clean up it a bit more. I do recall having the 'serial terminal'
>> working. It still has several bugs.
> 
> Do you have a copy of its manual, the MPM-201C? About 122 pages, has all
> the internals, and a list of the op-codes in both hex and nemonic
> shorthand for an assembler I never had.

I didn't know about that manual. Archive.org has it so I'll grab the
PDF.

> Today of course its all on hard drives, many terabytes of them. And the 5
> second pre-rolls needed to get stuff in synch with those early machines,
> the "ballistics" is now 20 milliseconds. Time marches on.

I think you'd be shocked at some of the things that are still being used.
I know of electronics from the late 1800 just now being replaced (hard
to get parts) and computer mini's from the 80's being replaced (hard to
get parts). New control systems aren't like toaday's COTS. Though management
does seem to think you can just replace it with a Windows machine (yikes).

-- 
Linux Home Automation         Neil Cherry       ncherry at linuxha.com
http://www.linuxha.com/                         Main site
http://linuxha.blogspot.com/                    My HA Blog
Author of:    	Linux Smart Homes For Dummies