What will I emulate?

Since Apollo manufactured a large variety of systems from 1981 until the early 1990s, we must pick a particular set of hardware to emulate, to make things easier for us. Through my research on Apollos, I have determined that a SAU7 machine is probably the best bet for what to emulate, particularly a system such as the DN3500.

Why should we use the DN3500?

One of the first reasons the DN3500 is a good bet is that it was one of Apollo's most popular products, and well supported by the last versions of Domain/OS. Additionally, Apollo's extensive use of ISA throughout the system allows those more familiar with PC hardware to work on Saturn V. I also have, right now, a dump of the DN3500 boot ROM, which is an excellent starting point for something to get running in Saturn V.

What will Saturn V emulate, at first?

In order to answer this question, we must first look at what a DN3500 has. A typical DN3500 system would have a configuration like this:

• Motorola 68030 CPU, at 25 MHz, with Motorola 68882 floating-point unit
• 4MB to 32MB of RAM, which is generous for Apollo systems (and anyone running Saturn V can have an Apollo DN3500 with 32 MB for free. Imagine that in 1989.)
• ISA-compatible expansion bus
• 170 or 380 MB ESDI hard disk, attached to an SMS OMTI 8621 ESDI controller
• Cartridge (QIC-24) tape controller and drive
• Some type of graphics board
• Apollo Token Ring or Ethernet interface, for networking

So what is a reasonable configuration for Saturn V to start out emulating? ESDI is a must, because otherwise, how will our "DN3500s" store data? Additionally, cartridge tape is also a must, as we need some way to get Domain/OS onto our "ESDI disks" in order for Saturn V to be of any use. We will also want graphics, since without DM, the full Apollo experience would not be possible. A reasonable start would be the 1280x1024 monochrome display board, as it is basically a dumb framebuffer. At some point, we will also want to emulate networking. I believe that Ethernet is our best bet, as we could then use Domain TCP/IP with Ethernet emulation to connect to the outside world with our "Apollos".

So what will the first release of Saturn V hopefully support? What are our goals for 1.0?

• DN3500 emulation
• Boots fully into Domain/OS
• 1280x1024 monochrome graphics support
• Ethernet support
• Support for ESDI disk storage
• Support for cartridge tape