Hydraulics help please

It was functionally similar to an Altair or PDP-8. The company was very supportive of my effort to learn computer engineering and programming and gave me the 8080 CPU and some samples of 6116 (2K x 8) CMOS memory that I kept alive with NiCads so I wouldn't have to enter the bootstrap loader each time. A Teletype saved programs on paper tape until I built an FSK modem to store them on a cassette recorder. The I/O ports were similar to an IBM PC's except the video which was a monochrome version of the Radio Shack Color Computer's.

I bought an RSP1A at a hamfest last weekend.

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In the 90's at Mitre I built prototypes of software-controlled digital radios like that but always turned them over to the engineers to play with.

The free SDRuno program makes it a universal radio receiver for up to

2 GHz, and it can also be a spectrum analyzer over that range. While it doesn't have the calibrated accuracy, wide scan width or tracking generator output of my HP spectrum analyzer the signal display is good, and looks much better on an HDTV.

On my suggestion the seller set up the demo to receive ADS-B data from nearby aircraft and overlay their locations onto Google Maps as a virtual radar, which had been a 90's Mitre project. ADS-B is at 1090 MHz, weather satellites are at 137 MHz. The aircraft band is 118-136 MHz. The Grants Pass tower is at 122.8 MHz, Cascade Approach is

124.3, and your weather (wx) is at 120.0. .

I bought a 25-1300 MHz discone antenna for it that I haven't set up yet, since I spent yesterday helping a neighbor fix his garage roof. The feed from my 50 foot high TV antenna was good enough to receive an AM broadcast station at 900 KHz.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins
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I always wondered why Terry didn't rig something like that, because hand loading was a PITA.

Having a spectrum analyzer sounds fun. Will it show the freq field with spikes at the currently transmitted freqs? And will it work for everything broadcasting at the moment, or be tuned only to the radio receiver you're working? I'm curious as to how it can be used, other than to tune/verify a radio transmitter freq or such.

Cool. I'll save that data and check it out on my UV-5R. I'm going to have to relearn it, I'm afraid.

Have fun! I wonder if the hams will broadcast the fights if the Leftists kick it off after coming out of the closet as peaceniks. This November election may drive them into action as they watch themselves lose more and more seats. Stay safe. Gunner's Great Cull may take place as a reaction to the Left's total unhingement. Vote early and take cover after removing political stickers from your vehicles. ;)

Reply to
Larry Jaques

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They are more useful than oscilloscopes for working with RF, nearly useless for almost anything else. Actually the instrument I used most at Mitre was a network analyzer which applies a frequency-swept signal to the input of a circuit and measures the output.

The RSP1A sweeps over a maximum of 10MHz so one 6 MHz wide HDTV channel takes up most of the screen. You can place the mouse cursor on any digit of the frequency display and roll it up or down with the mouse wheel to move the on-screen frequency band.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I started with power-hungry 256x4 SRAM. I don't know when the 6116 became available but I got the samples around the time the PC-XT was introduced. The company built RAM test stations for major manufacturers and received pre-production samples of new product to evaluate. IIRC the samples I had were slower than production versions.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

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