Installing PiDP8i from components...

(1) By Ian (g8ogj) on 2019-09-10 15:29:19 [source]

Folks,

I have a PiDP8/I with a Raspberry pi zero as the back-end (thanks Oscar!)...

I'd like to run another package on the Raspberry pi zero in my PiDP8/I to make use of the spare CPU capacity.  Specifically it is an amateur radio application which runs a digital radio internet gateway.

It seems that that software will only run on a specific Raspbian build.  There is no restriction on me adding things to that build but there is not sufficient documentation to enable me to put the relevant packages on my PiDP8/I build - so I plan to try the other way around.

Is there any documentation to allow me to install PiDP8/i from individual packages rather than by using a pre-built binary?

Ian

(2) By Warren Young (tangent) on 2019-09-10 21:15:53 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

pi zero...spare CPU capacity...amateur radio

You're probably going to want to throttle the simulator to match the speed of a real PDP-8, then. I think you're going to end up with a stuttery front panel without doing that, and maybe even after doing it.

Linux doesn't offer programs running under it hard real-time guarantees, yet running the front panel smoothly is inherently a timing-sensitive operation. If another background process takes a bunch of CPU time or makes the SD card busy while writing, etc., our simulator has to wait on that until the Linux kernel decides to give us some CPU time. If that puts us "behind" our simulated schedule, we just have to catch up as best we can, usually giving a stuttery display.

It seems that that software will only run on a specific Raspbian build.

We have OS requirements, too.

Is there any documentation to allow me to install PiDP8/i from individual packages rather than by using a pre-built binary?

Quoting the fifth paragraph from the top of the project home page: "See the README.md file for more information on how to install this into your existing Raspberry Pi OS."