开云体育Just compare the Altair to the IMSAI front panels. They are separated by 2-3 years and the grouping changed from an octal grouping to a hex grouping.
I’ve seen a few Altairs in which the user put colored toggle caps (remember those from Radio Shack?) on the switches to improve the toggling speed through visual cues. That’s why I think the IMSAI front panel is a stroke of genius
— the visual cues and grouping made toggling easier (IMHO).
Get
? From: [email protected] on behalf of joshbensadon via Groups.Io <joshbensadon@...>
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2019 9:26 AM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Z8MC] An idea! ?
I should note... the original idea of using colours for HEX / Octal wasn't mine, I got it from the IMSAI 8080, the switches could be re-arranged for HEX or Octal.? I'm not sure if that was an original idea in 1976 either, it really never ceases
to amaze me of how many ideas for modern computers came from the 50's and 60's.??
Paul,
I should have mentioned that the Altaid is capable of running CP/M.? It does not have the flexibility that is available with the Z80MC, but the firmware expects 512K of RAM.?
NO SD card, just a big RAM disk.? The first 64K of RAM is for system and the remaining 448K is used as a RAM Disk.? You may Xmodem load/save this RAM Disk
image.? It comes with 2 programs preloaded, PIP and XM (Xmodem to transfer individual files to/from the disk).
XM is a simplified small version of Martin Eberhard's XModem.?
Josh
On Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 2:44:18 p.m. CST, Paul Bigwood <paul@...> wrote:
Lee,
?
I was very interested in the G Barrow 8080 S100 board octal display and keypad. A Google search turned up the user manual with cct and rom code.
I first learnt octal coding when i worked at DEC as a field service engineer in the uk in the '80s, and had forgotten how opcodes could be decoded and encoded easier using octal compared to hex.?
Octal was very popular when the 8080 first came out.?
I wondered if it is possible to space the address bus and data bus LEDs in octal spacing rather than binary/hex making it easier to enter and read the LEDS in octal. e.g. Data LEDs and switches are spaced?
Like this? XX XXX XXX? rather than XXXXXXXX. Same applies for Address bus. Vis
Address bus XX XXX XXX XX XXX XXX rather than the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.
Is it planned to add a SD card for cp/m??
Best regards
Paul G3WYW?
As i understand the existing code,? the bus input switches toggle the associated?
R
?
Sent from Samsung tablet.
|
