[Simh] Hardware Requirements

[Pontus Pihlgren]

On Tue, Dec 07, 2010 at 09:21:43AM -0500, Ken Cornetet wrote:
> Keep in mind that the printer port on regular old PCs can be used for a few lines of general input and output. I used to do this on a regular basis back in the DOS days. Looks easy under linux too: http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/IO-Port-Programming.html

It's a solution I'm considering, but I have a concern. Besides the 
PDP-15 panel I also have a PDP-12 panel. The PDP-12 panel has arround 
120 lights. So while I think it will be possible to control them by 
cascading shift registers, I'm worried it will be to slow.

Having more I/O pins and narrower shift registers would speed things up.

I would love to be proven wrong here, in which case I can dig out a 
Pentium III with parallel port and start experimenting.

 - Pontus.