> On Oct 24, 2018, at 4:17 PM, ben via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>> ...
>
> 70's computers are more interesting. That is why do we have PI computers
> running PDP 8 emulators?
It's all in what you want to do. If your interest is mostly the software, as
it is for many of us, then running emulators makes a lot of sense. If your
interest is the machine architecture, you might want to reverse engineer the
design and implement it in an FPGA. Depending on how deep you want to go, that
might be a functional model or a gate level model. A functional model may not
tell you a whole lot more than a software emulator does; a gate level model is
often hard to pull off but if you can do it, it will tell you everything you
want to know about the original design including all its undocumented strange
properties.
And if you enjoy working on old electronics, there's no substitute for the
original iron. That's not an option if none exists any longer, or so few that
people don't dare powering them on. For example, it would be neat to run an
EL-X8, but that's not going to happen, there's only one left. At least it is
preserved in a real museum.
As for myself, I've done all of the above: work on SIMH and DtCyber, work on a
gate level model of the CDC 6600, and (occasionally) run my old Pro-380.
paul