How to describe HERITAGE / 1 (in short)?
A minicomputer twentieth century home built in the century XXI designed to do useful work in the fashion of those times.
BASASTE WHAT DOES THE ELECTION OF THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT?
dedición There was a sudden, it started developing naturally over the first two months.
wanted to build my machine with integrated circuits 7400 series, so you should place it after 1966, that they were invented. But in those days, computers used ferrite memory - impossible for me! - Hence the second dimension in 1972, the year that Intel made a massive release of its first semiconductor memory (1103).
In 1972, however, the "minis" were no longer as simple as pretending to be my Heritage / 1. Already using virtual memory, hard drives and microprocessors to support tasks (such as terminals). Therefore decided imagine a machine designed in 1966 with ferrite memory, which was replaced later with semiconductor memory once it was available (1972).
plays in my favor modular design of Heritage / 1. Indeed, the memory is located in a dedicated unit, separated from the CPU, linked to it by a proprietary bus that consists of two ribbon cable. So, in real life, there would have been difficult to replace the old ferrite semiconductor memory.
notice that I have been strict with this historical context (1966-1972) but only up to where it was reasonable to do so. For example, my memory is Intel 1103 (Dynamic 1Kx1) but 6264LP-70 (SRAM 8Kx8 70ns). Also, my chips are not equivalents HCMOS TTL but since the former consume too much energy and get very hot. Nor
tapes but I will use diskettes, but "thought" as tapes. And I will not teletype terminals only on PCs running MS-DOS Kermit.
can a machine "useful" or a machine, "IN USE"?
One assumption is that it is usable, which provides guidance for the design itself: it comes to producing a minicomputer, not an experiment, many dediciones design have been based on that premise.
My dream - besides that it really works! - Is used in workings of my day-to-day. I do not think I trust my personal computer system, but may charge you some odd jobs as a simple mathematical calculations and control tasks. The latter will be easier in a simple and well known hardware such as the Heritage / 1 on a PC where, between hardware and application software, there's a chasm.
OPERATING SYSTEM WILL USE WHAT HERITAGE / 1?
not know yet. Now I am focused entirely on the hardware design. A hardware optimized for a certain system OS? No, not really, and this is part of the "culture" of Heritage / 1.
The only interest of the hardware, in general, is to support an increasingly demanding software. The real action is in the software, this is a reality that has existed for decades. Heritage / 1, however, lies in a historical context where the hardware was still cause for concern to the programmers themselves.
So this project is, say, the opportunity to savor the view of a computer design and electronic devices (hardware only) ... the software will come later. And fortunate, then surprised that something so intricate as an operating system can run on that monster that was not designed expressly for him.
But, Heritage / 1 run any operating system in the end. My dream (long term) is to carry a Minix or Unix clone as netBSD, but I can not guarantee because dreams are dreams ...
DREAM Anything else?
I believe every hobby project serves as inspiration and practical knowledge channeling Heritage / 1 is not an exception. After all knowledge (in general) is an abstraction and as such, a dream.
The Heritage / 1, in particular, has get to be exposed to a wealth of knowledge that only news was very vague. The mere desire to run Unix Heritage / 1, for example, has led me to explore that culture (Unix is \u200b\u200ba culture rather than an operating system) to point to install NetBSD on an old PC and get to play with him.
Another dream is that this experience serves not only to me. I'm not focused on it, but I would like the documentation of this project would serve the dessert for the benefit of hobbyists and students, in the same way that I have served on other (prior to me) as Bill Buzbee's Magic-1 and John Doran's D16 / M (see links).
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