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beeshed:
Only just noticed this thread.
Any one else a member of the Amateur Computer Club back in the seventies?
The ACC published a design based on a state machine ALU in about 1975 and the '7768' using the 6800 in 1977 which I built at work on a bit of double sided pcb I found. Those days we were still hand drawing boards and etching in a tray on our desk for prototypes for satellites and military electronics. I scrounged a few of the chips but had to buy the Micro for £30 as we weren't using anything so advanced at work. 256 bytes of ram, 8 data and 8 address switches and 8 LEDs for output. Later added video and 32k ram.
Anyone go to the London Computer Fairs in the '80s run by the Associatonof London Computer Clubs?
I was amused by the comment in the starting link about 128k being enough memory to do something useful. My first wordprocessor was just 2k and even had line justification.

Auskart:
I built this one back in 1978, fun but not really functional.

http://www.chookfest.net/computers/miniscamp.html

rythmnbls:

--- Quote from: Auskart on July 13, 2015, 04:58:19 PM ---I built this one back in 1978, fun but not really functional.

http://www.chookfest.net/computers/miniscamp.html

--- End quote ---

Wow what a trip down memory lane.

I built the Dick Smith kit version of the Miniscamp in '79, it had 256 bytes of ram and no e/p/rom at all. Ram was programmed by halting the cpu with a switch, tristating the buses with the dma switch and loading byte data into each ram location by setting address and data values with front panel switches and pressing the load/deposit button, a write speed of about 2 bytes / minute :)  I never did anything useful with mine except for the usual counting programs.

It was a great learning tool and today I still make my living in the world of computers.

Best Regards,

Steve.

Auskart:
Yes I remember programming the Miniscamp by the front switches, get 3/4's of the way through and then forgetting where you were up to in the program, great fun having to start again.  :doh:

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