Simulator questions [message #10833] |
Sat, 17 August 2024 12:54  |
skippy
Messages: 4 Registered: January 2017
|
Junior Member |
|
|
I'm an old retired EE, very familiar with digital circuitry. I have several ideas on homebrew projects but would like to troubleshoot them (as much as possible) with a simulator before construction. I have never used a simulator. Looking for suggestions.
One question, if I wanted to build something with a Am2901/2909 or Am3001/3002 would I have to build the ICs out of simple gates or are there pre-packaged versions of these available?
Thanks for any help.
|
|
|
Re: Simulator questions [message #10834 is a reply to message #10833] |
Fri, 23 August 2024 00:18  |
jayindallas
Messages: 110 Registered: June 2021
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Skippy wrote: "...I'm an old retired EE, very familiar with digital circuitry. I have several ideas on homebrew projects but would like to troubleshoot them (as much as possible) with a simulator before construction. I have never used a simulator. Looking for suggestions... One question, if I wanted to build something with a Am2901/2909 or Am3001/3002 would I have to build the ICs out of simple gates or are there pre-packaged versions of these available?..."
JayInDallas replies: A couple of years before I got my EE, I had a student co-op engineering job 'across' the street from Mostek; an after-work baseball opponent of ours. One of the engineers I sometimes worked for, said the same thing about the Am2900. He wanted to someday design his own CPU using the bit-slice AM2900 series. Maybe many engineers had the same thought and eventually revisit that idea?
The only real Am2900 project I know of was back in '82:83. Russ Sendelbach (designer of the Miniterm Associates MERLIN graphics S-100 card) was designing an Intel MultiBus winchester controller board based on the Am2900 series. My mentor correctly speculated that Russ' use of bit-slice would... (1) take an extra year to get it to market due to bit-slicing giving the designer too many options and (2) it would be a two-board Multi-Bus(1) card set.
As to purchasing those Am2902 series chips in 202x... its not impossible. You have to check. I recently learned that the TMS-7000 series CPU can still be purchased so odds a good that you might be about to find the Am2900 available from vintage component sales. You might find example places to buy from in the US by looking through the recent discussions about the "CTS" and "SP0256." I don't recall if that information was only discussed in email; it seems likely some reference to the vintage stock sales in the US should appear within those discussions. One thing for sure... BEWARE of overseas sources; a lot are relabeled fakes.
[Updated on: Mon, 26 August 2024 00:14] Report message to a moderator
|
|
|