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As a Single Board Computer

A project log for Rack8 MCM/70 rack machine replica

Goal: Build a replica, using an actual 8008-1 chip, of the "rack" machine used at Micro Computer Machines when developing the MCM/70.

camfarnellcamfarnell 01/04/2024 at 01:430 Comments

With the Omniport interface, and the GPI board, and a test peripheral working that meant that the entire design was done. This photo shows the full breadboarded system with annotations:

The next task was to turn everything - except the GPI and test peripheral - into a single board computer. This was a bit of an exercise, as there are 200+ components and 1500+ connections, which resulted in a six layer board. With this level of complexity I wasn't totally surprised that there were a few issues on the board, but none were catastrophic, and there were reasonable workarounds for all.

The board, populated and working, looks like this:

and it works as expected and runs MCM/APL. From my viewpoint, this was fabulous progress.

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