My Brain-In-A-Jar Project

After 3 years in the making, better late than ever, RetroShield 6120 is finally ready for public. This retroshield is designed for the Harris HD-6120, which is PDP-8 on-a-chip.

• Teensy emulates Robert Armstrong's excellent SBC6120 HW design.
• BTS6120 monitor code (by Robert Armstrong
• You can modify teensy code to implement your own IOT's
• NOTE: There is no front-panel at this time. All communication happens over UART.

Experimental:

• booting OS8 from sdcard is work-in-progress. It boots to OS8 prompt, runs BASIC, etc.

Please note This retroshield requires our Teensy adapter board due to the memory and disk requirements.

What do you get?

Following options are available:

• Kit w/ a HD6120 cpu
• Kit without the HD6120 cpu (if you have your own HD6120 chip)
• PCB only

What makes it special?

You can "breadboard in software" meaning you can design, change, update your hardware platform as easily as modifying the source code.

NOTE: International Shipping

If you don't see your country, please contact me. DHL prices range widely per country so it is hard to use a fixed price for the whole world :(

I plan to ship DHL to Europe because during 2023/24 I had multiple lost packages thru the post office shipping. Given 6120 is more expensive & rare, it will be safe to ship w/ DHL. I'm sorry it's a bit more expensive but it is guaranteed and your package will arrive in 3-5 days instead of weeks.

Notes on OS8

On poweron, SBC6120 boots into BTS6120 monitor code. You can view, edit, disassemble, panel and main memory, etc.

To boot into OS8, prepare SDCARD w/ disk image and type B in the monitor for bootstrap.

• "B" -> Boot into OS8
• "SET TTY NO PAUSE" -> Disable TTY pauses in OS8
• "DIR SYS:" -> show drive SYS:, mostly system.
• "DIR IDA1:" -> show drive IDA1:, mostly games.
• "BASIC" -> Start BASIC