Thanks Rob! That’s good news! I suspect if you have a full can 1.8432 oscillator you could make that work too. Attach some stiff 24 gauge wire to the pins and line them up with the socket pins 1, 4, 5, and 8. The relative order of the pins are identical for half and full sized can TTL oscillators. That is unfortunate you could not find one locally. I checked with Farnell UK and they only offer the SMD versions of the oscillators. Those might work too but would be a real PITA to adapt. I wonder if there are some UK and/or European builders who would have some more ideas for part sources.
Regarding the DEC MicroVAX testing that would be super! Programming the EPROM/EEPROM should be not too hard since the parts are common-as-dirt 27C256 or 28C256 chips. Personally I recommend the el-cheapo Willem Programmers on ebay. They are practically disposable they are so inexpensive. However I use mine quite a bit and it is indispensable which is amazing for something that cost so little. There are USB only programmers as well but those tend to be a bit more expensive – relative to this job I doubt there is any real difference since every model will support such common chips. Probably worth it in the long term. Personally I have several programmers for different jobs. Nothing beats the Data IO 29B for the *really* old stuff.
By the way, I know your S2I is almost done and running but for anyone else on this email distribution list… if you have an S2I board that you are not using or for whatever reason cannot get around to build and test PLEASE PLEASE return the board to me or another builder so we can utilize it. I am getting *MANY* requests for the prototypes to support testing so it is a shame to leave even these crude S2I prototypes just gathering dust somewhere. I will be glad to cover shipping if that’s an issue.
Thank you very much! Have a nice day!
Andrew Lynch
Regarding the DEC MicroVAX testing that would be super! Programming the EPROM/EEPROM should be not too hard since the parts are common-as-dirt 27C256 or 28C256 chips. Personally I recommend the el-cheapo Willem Programmers on ebay. They are practically disposable they are so inexpensive. However I use mine quite a bit and it is indispensable which is amazing for something that cost so little. There are USB only programmers as well but those tend to be a bit more expensive – relative to this job I doubt there is any real difference since every model will support such common chips. Probably worth it in the long term. Personally I have several programmers for different jobs. Nothing beats the Data IO 29B for the *really* old stuff.
By the way, I know your S2I is almost done and running but for anyone else on this email distribution list… if you have an S2I board that you are not using or for whatever reason cannot get around to build and test PLEASE PLEASE return the board to me or another builder so we can utilize it. I am getting *MANY* requests for the prototypes to support testing so it is a shame to leave even these crude S2I prototypes just gathering dust somewhere. I will be glad to cover shipping if that’s an issue.
Thank you very much! Have a nice day!
Andrew Lynch