PCjr Blinkenlights

[mbbrutman]

It took me a while to document this system (6 years) but I finally did it!

The writeup and a link to a YouTube video is here: http://brutman.com/PCjr/pcjr_legacy.html

Now that's not something you are going to see on too many machines.

 

[Bill_Loguidice]

Pretty damned awesome!

 

[pontus]

That is absolutely adorable!

If you were to do debugging in some sort of monitor software and single step through code (is that even possible with the 8088?) would the front panel not be useful then?

 

[mbbrutman]

Single step is possible, but you get an interrupt after each instruction. And then you probably go to a debugger, which sits and spins and causes the lights to keep moving.

What would really be nice is either a 'freeze' button on the panel. I don't know how feasible single step is - if you could get the processor to halt, then you'd have to figure out how to get the next single step to occur. That could be through external hardware, but it's not something I've worked with before.

(I have fond memories of clocking simple circuits one clock at a time with a momentary push button.)

 

[analog]

I made something similar a while back, but hex readout instead of bits... mostly useless, but kinda neat

 

[linuxlove]

<3 blinkenlights. even if i wasn't born in the PDP/Altair age, i think blinkenlights are still pretty cool.

 

[mbbrutman]

I made something similar a while back, but hex readout instead of bits... mostly useless, but kinda neat

HEX readout is fine - but did you have a way to freeze it, momentarily at least?

Can we bribe you to share the instructions on how to do it? I think that would make a neat project.


Mike