[time-nuts] Questions about Austron 5000 Loran C receiver

[Don Lewis]

I still have a PDP/8 with 4k core memory out in the garage.  (a jillion RTL
cards in it).  It was free to e then, broken, ...I had to find t\all the bad
transistors.... 

During college, ..I would sit in the floor with that thing and toggle in
small programs in machine language to count up and down, seemingly
impressing everyone with the binary lights dancing on the front panel.

...this all makes me want to pull it out and 'toggle' some more, again....

-Don



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-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com] On
Behalf Of Bob Camp
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2012 6:55 PM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Questions about Austron 5000 Loran C receiver

Hi

Ahhh... The days of toggling the boot loader in with the front panel
switches. So much fin.

Bob



On Mar 3, 2012, at 7:45 PM, Jim Lux <jimlux at earthlink.net> wrote:

> On 3/3/12 4:13 PM, Azelio Boriani wrote:
>> Geez, I have read and I don't think it is possible to replicate the CALOC
>> PDP-8/E software nor it is useful to use the Austron 5000 Loran receiver,
>> my understanding is that it was used to control and steer the system. It
>> seems they were in use until the year 2000! Maybe that using MATLAB it is
>> possible to exploit the Austron 5000 functionality nowadays, provided
that,
>> someway, the 12bit samples from the Austron are transferred to the PC.
>> Anyway to start with, at least the receiver connectors pinout is
>> mandatory...
>> 
> 
> There are PDP8 emulators out there.  Not to mention actual
microcontrollers that implement the PDP8 instruction set (aside from the
no-doubt out of production Intersil part).
> 
> And a fair number of FPGA implementations in your choice of language.
> 
> While it might not be as scenic as that nice plastic see through housing
with all those discrete DTL circuit cards in the original straight 8.  I
used a 8/i way back in the early 70s and I was bummed that it was just a
single box in the rack.
> 
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