Re: Perfboard computers, VAX and others - Re: About support for rtVAX300

[Paul Koning <paulkoning%comcast.net@localhost>]

On Jan 14, 2013, at 1:40 PM, John Wilson wrote:

> From: Toby Thain <toby%telegraphics.com.au@localhost>
> 
>> I have 
>> a couple of J11's sitting around, and a dozen Transputers. I'd love to 
>> learn enough electronics, and have enough spare time, to build the 
>> support circuitry and run them.
> 
> You definitely should!  I don't know much about the Transputer but if it's
> anything like the XMOS XS1 CPU (same architect) it must be a ton of fun.
> 
> John Wilson
> D Bit

Transputers are interesting beasts.  All I know is their theory, which appears 
to be small compute nodes interconnected by multiple fast message passing 
links.  So you can build a large multicomputer setup with a mesh of those.  

For programming, you can use C or the like, but there's a different programming 
language (Occam) specifically designed to make use of that message passing 
machinery.  Given who created it (C.A.R. Hoare) I assume it ties into his 
research into the design of reliable distributed algorithms.

        paul