[rescue] Sun 3/80 Schematics

[Bill Dorsey]

Hi Chris,

My bad for not being clear about my goals.B  The 3/80 is a horrible data
acquisition system compared to anything modern, and probably even to older
systems for which turnkey data acquisition systems existed at the time --
assuming you could find any of that stuff.B  I like tinkering with old
hardware and old software to see what I can make it do.B  Hacking the 3/80 to
run at 25 MHz was arguably pointless for the 25% performance gain given that
modern computers are 10,000 times faster anyway.B  What I get from the 3/80
that I don't get from anything modern is the ability to understand most or all
of what is happening both electrically and with the software.B  To me this
makes it much more rewarding to work on.B  I can modify the operating system
to work with the hardware modifications I make at the component level.B  I
would never be able to do this on anything modern.B  The Linux kernel has over
12 million lines of code in it.B  Compare that to ~400,000 for SunOS 4.1.B  A
similar or greater ratio of complexity exists on the hardware side as well.B 
Given the number of hours in a day, I need to either specialize and give up
the big picture, or stick to simpler hardware.B  I've given up the big picture
for my day job, but the hell if I'm going to do that for fun.B  ;)

- Bill

On 10/15/19 10:19 PM, Chris Hanson wrote:

> If you want to do data acquisition and process control, Ibm not sure what
> modding a 3/80 would get you.
>
> Why not put together a VME system with something like an MVME147 or MVME167
> <http://m88k.com/mvme167.html <http://m88k.com/mvme167.html>>? You can get
a
> small VME backplane, enclosure, and PSU pretty inexpensively, as well as
the
> cards, and it should work great for that purpose.
>
> Of course you could even get real Sun VME gear such as a 3/e to do this. :)
>
>    -- Chris
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