[sebhc] H8 recreation/follow on

[Jack Rubin]

> But...
> 
> To me, the Heath H8 was the Altair 8800 done *right*. It 
> really worked. It really did have all the hardware and 
> software to make it a *real* computer, capable of doing 
> useful work. The manuals were great! Anyone who could read 
> could build it. The design "bugs" were relatively few, and 
> fixes for them well-known (gold-plated bus connectors, 0-org, 
> Z80 CPU, etc).
> 
> So... would it make sense to build a *new* H8 kit? Update the 
> design to include all the basic fixes, and use modern parts 
> (74HC instead 74LS, Z80 instead of 8080, modern bytewide 
> memories, etc.).

Lee,

I think you left out a few other items - a decent motherboard with a
good ground plane and active termination, and a switching power supply
with regulated output and no on-board regulators - but your point is
well taken.

My reaction is that I'd like to see more of what we're starting to talk
about here - modern, low power solutions to replace rare or unreliable
components, but staying with an original chassis. Not too sure how I
feel about a full replacement, but I would definitely be interested in
byte-wide SRAM (running it now), IDE, high-speed serial output and
networking capability (wanna write a TCP/IP stack for HDOS? - actually I
think arcnet might be a good fit here). We have a chance to exercise
both our collective design/validation skills and our collective buying
power.

Of course it becomes like George Washington's axe - the handle has been
replaced 10 times and the head 12 times but it's still the original axe.
Somehow something is lost when an emulation - hardware or software - is
used. I don't know what the difference is, but it's real. Kind of like
automotive replicas - there are some real nice Cobra and GT40 kits out
there, but they just aren't the same, even though they may outperform
the "real" item. What the heck - the whole machine could probably be
replicated in a Xilinix FPGA, but if you had the original front panel,
it would still feel the same.

I know that a big part of the appeal of this old stuff for me is the
(perhaps false) belief that I can get my arms/head around most of what's
there with discrete logic, a 1 MHz clock and non-segmented memory. I'm
just barely an electronics hobbyist, not an EE. I don't feel that way
about modern stuff. Kind of the Peter principle of electronics - I've
risen to my highest level of incompetence; let me poke around at this
level for a while and maybe I can move on to 16 bits! 

And don't forget the collecting aspect for many of us - there's real
excitement in the hunt for information and artifacts. 

My 2 ohms worth!
Jack

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