While I don't have experience with the Horizon, I think it is similar
(software-wise) to the Advantage (though the Advantage is NOT S100). I
have some software, some for CP/M and some for the NS-DOS. Note that the
floppy disks are hard sectored, impossible to find nowadays and just as
hard to read/write on anything else... (AFAIK - if someone has a program
to do this please speak up!)
Joachim (I usually sign "Joe" but I think that would cause confusion...)
> Joe,
>
> I don't know if software is available but will ask. Does the NS
> horizon use a S-100 bus? I was told the unit I'm (hopefully) about to
>
> acquire has an internal 10MB hard drive. i'm going to go eyeball the
> unit within the next few days.
>
> Marty
>
>
> ______________________________ Reply Separator
> _________________________________
> Subject: Re: North Star Horizon
> Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet
> Date: 2/24/98 1:00 PM
>
>
> Marty,
>
> I have some manuals for the NS Horizon; disk controller, DOS,
> BASIC,
> Pascal. I'm looking for the software.
>
> Joe
>
> At 12:36 PM 2/24/98 -0500, you wrote:
> > Does anybody have any information on a North Star Horizon? I may be
>
> > acquiring one of these soon but don't know much about it except
> that
> > it has wooden side panels and used to support a half-dozen
> terminals.
> > Is it a S-100 bus?
> >
> > Thanks for any help-
> >
> > Marty Mintzell
> >
> >
>
>
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> From: Joe <rigdonj(a)intellistar.net>
> To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
> <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Re: North Star Horizon
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Joe wrote about a Northstar Horizon:
> I think it uses the S-100 bus. According to their manual, North Star
>used the same disk controller in the Horizon that they sold for the S-100
>systems. I have a NS S-100 controller. They are the same electricaly and
>software wise but maybe physically different.
I did some software work on a Horizon many years ago. As I recall, it had
two full height 5.25" bays, a good sized power supply behind the bays (on
the right side) and a shorty S-100 card cage on the left, 8 card slots? But
the NS motherboard also had some logic on the motherboard, at the rear. I
believe there were one or two 8251 serial ports, a baud rate generator,
maybe a parallel port or interrupt controller (look for an Intel 8214 or a
28-pin AMD IC)?
Tony wrote:
>>
>>
>> <But surely this is a limitation of the front panel not the processor.
>> <I/O bus cycles can (easily) be generated from an appropriately designed
>> <front panel.
>>
>> Processor. The 8080 CPU does I/O To/From the accumulator which is
>
>I beg to differ.
>
>All you have to do is to put the CPU into a wait state, tri-state the
>bus buffers and directly drive the address, data and control lines from
>hardware on the frontpanel controller. You can access memory or I/O ports
>that way.
>
In other words, make the front panel do a DMA access, either to memory or an
I/O port? That way it doesn't affect the CPU state at all, except the CPU
has to be running in order to handle the DMA grant.
I finally got the **** thing to boot every time without falling over sideways!
This is a step!
The only problem is, it's still single-user - I still can't get a DZ-11 to work.
I don't think I ever will - I was told you have to kill a 12-pack to get one
to work, and I'm not old enough to buy beer. :)
Anyway, I found an interesting goody in the spare 44 - It's a hex-height
board I recognised from the VAX 750 manual I have. It has 2 50-pin
cables going off to a 16-port EIA distribution panel. It appears to be a DMA
peripheral, it has CA1 and CB1 going off into logic, so I made a DMA slot for
it after the UDA50 in the 2nd BA-11. So, I bring up RSTS - And here's the
result:
Option: HARDWR LIST
Name Address Vector Comments
TT0: 177560 060
RU0: 172150 310 Units: 0(RA81)
KL0: 176510 300 <<< What is that?
KW11L 177546 100
SR 177570 Volatile
DR 177570
Hertz = 60.
Other: FPU, 22-Bit Addressing, Data Space, Cache
-------------------- AFTER THE INSERTION OF THE MODULE -------------------
Option: HARDWR LIST
Name Address Vector Comments
TT0: 177560 060
RU0: 172510 310 Units: 0(RA81)
KL0: 176510 300
DM0: 170500 440 DH0
KW11L 177546 100
SR 177570 Volatile
DR 177570
Herts = 60.
Other: FPU, 22-Bit Addressing, Data Space, Cache
-----------------------------
But when I say START:
KB9:KB24 disabled - no DH0: controller
Does that mean it's broken, or is the Monitor need rebuilt?
Oh, and Tim: The tape drives appear to handle 1600 BPI, but the controllers
don't. I'm gonna dig out my Emulex stuff and see if any of them will handle
this tape.
And wasn't DM0: a disk controller? Am I supposed to reset the CSRs to this?
-------
-John Rollins typed:
>
>>OK, does anyone know what this card came from? Anyone know what uses and
86
>>pin bus?
This is from vague memory, but if the card is roughly the same size as an
S-100 card (5 x 10 inches) and has an 86 pin bus connector, I think it might
be an old Motorola bus. I don't remember what they called it, never used
Motorola development systems, but it was Motorola's answer to Intel's
Multibus.
Joe,
I don't know if software is available but will ask. Does the NS
horizon use a S-100 bus? I was told the unit I'm (hopefully) about to
acquire has an internal 10MB hard drive. i'm going to go eyeball the
unit within the next few days.
Marty
______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: North Star Horizon
Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet
Date: 2/24/98 1:00 PM
Marty,
I have some manuals for the NS Horizon; disk controller, DOS, BASIC,
Pascal. I'm looking for the software.
Joe
At 12:36 PM 2/24/98 -0500, you wrote:
> Does anybody have any information on a North Star Horizon? I may be
> acquiring one of these soon but don't know much about it except that
> it has wooden side panels and used to support a half-dozen terminals.
> Is it a S-100 bus?
>
> Thanks for any help-
>
> Marty Mintzell
>
>
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To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: North Star Horizon
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Joe,
Thanks for the information. I'm located in northern Virginia just
outside Washington, D.C.
Marty
______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: Re[2]: North Star Horizon
Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet
Date: 2/24/98 5:07 PM
Marty,
I think it uses the S-100 bus. According to their manual, North Star
used the same disk controller in the Horizon that they sold for the S-100
systems. I have a NS S-100 controller. They are the same electricaly and
software wise but maybe physically different.
Sounds like a neat system, I've never heard of one having a hard drive.
Keep me posted.
BTW where are you? I'm in Orlando, Florida.
Joe
At 01:10 PM 2/24/98 -0500, you wrote:
> Joe,
>
> I don't know if software is available but will ask. Does the NS
> horizon use a S-100 bus? I was told the unit I'm (hopefully) about to
> acquire has an internal 10MB hard drive. i'm going to go eyeball the
> unit within the next few days.
>
> Marty
>
>
>______________________________ Reply Separator
>_________________________________
>Subject: Re: North Star Horizon
>Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet
>Date: 2/24/98 1:00 PM
>
>
> Marty,
>
> I have some manuals for the NS Horizon; disk controller, DOS, BASIC,
> Pascal. I'm looking for the software.
>
> Joe
>
> At 12:36 PM 2/24/98 -0500, you wrote:
> > Does anybody have any information on a North Star Horizon? I may be
> > acquiring one of these soon but don't know much about it except that
> > it has wooden side panels and used to support a half-dozen terminals.
> > Is it a S-100 bus?
> >
> > Thanks for any help-
> >
> > Marty Mintzell
> >
> >
>
>
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Subject: Re: Re[2]: North Star Horizon
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<But surely this is a limitation of the front panel not the processor.
<I/O bus cycles can (easily) be generated from an appropriately designed
<front panel.
Processor. The 8080 CPU does I/O To/From the accumulator which is
inaccessable from the front pannel being an internal register. An altair
did things by forcing a jump(C3h, xx, zz) the address switches were used
as zzxx forcing the PC to take the set value. Data at a given MEMORY
address was displayed as a result of the current address and stopping
before the next instructing fetch. Writing to MEMORY was simply gating
the data switches and forcing a write pulse (no cpu execution). Its
design was to allow insetion of code into memory and examination of
memory as those were direct. IO however while it would be nice to
interogate or write to devices could leave the cpu "out of sync" since
all IO is done from the accumulator. To do that you really need a soft
front panel and once you do that, displaying or altering the Acc, BC, DE,
HL and SP registers and associated flags are possible.
Did my fair share of 8080/8085/z80 designs in the '70s.
Allison
