Hi Guys,
Well --- I played with these two machines this evening.
Case anyone missed my original posting - as part of a sizable load
of equipment I picked up this past weekend, I received two homebrew
S-100 systems which are reported to be complete implementations
of a TRS-80 on S-100 cards.
They had been stored for a long time in a cottage, so they were
quite dirty (fortunately no evidence of mice!) - Removed all cards,
cleaned up the slots and connections, checked out the power supply,
reinserted the cards, hooked up a Zenith monitor and fired the
first one up...
Immediately got a "Cass?" prompt, then "Memory size?", and finally:
Radio Shack Model III BASIC
.... normal Model III stuff ...
READY
>
yup - the thing actually works!
This one has:
WAMECO CPU-2 Z80 CPU card
SSM VB1B video card, with fairly extensive modifications, presumably
to make it TRS-80 video compatible.
A standard S-100 memory card (didn't write the type down).
A homebuilt card which has EPROM copies of the TRS-80 ROMs, as well as
a fair bit of logic, speaker circuit, keyboard interface --- I would
guess "Everything else" from the TRS-80.
So, I moved on to the second one - this one has the same cards as the
one above, plus a homebuilt disk controller card. Cleaned it up, checked
the supply, powered it up and --- NOTHING!
Then I remembered that you need to hold BREAK at reset/power-up on TRS-80s
with disks to get to ROM basic ... Tried holding BREAK and voila! - same
prompts as above!
So, I hooked up the drives, powered on - sure enough, Drive 1 came on...
Put in a TRS-DOS disk for the Model III, and hit reset --- Next thing
I know, I'm in TRS-DOS, running exactly like a Model III.
!!!
As Sellam put it so eloquently ... this things are effing cool!
Will take pics this weekend, and try to get them (and more of the new stuff)
on the site sometime next week - will post a notice when ready.
Regards,
Dave
--
dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html
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Cheers
John
>the attraction is to all the people that burn themselves WHENEVER they
>pick up a soldering iron...
I thought those burns where a right of passage in using an iron!?!
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
http://news.com.com/How+the+Mac+was+born%2C+and+other+tales/2008-1082_3-552…
=====
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>From: chris <cb(a)mythtech.net>
>
>>Still, they seem to be selling like mad, but if they're no good for
>>electronics then what's the attraction?
>
>Yeah, I was a little surprised to see in their FAQ's that they say it is
>NOT recommended for electronics use... considering the commercial CLEARLY
>shows a person using it on electronics!
>
>I guess its another example of do as a I say and not as I do (eh, who am
>I kidding, all these "as seen on TV products" use them on TV in ways that
>they tell you not to use them)
>
Hi
It is something like the Sears ad where they took
a pair of pliers to the axle nut of a bicycle. They
even used one of the people that ran a house fixer-up
show to do it. He should have been ashamed of him
self. I couldn't believe they were actually doing
it with a smile.
Dwight
I was in Well territory in 1988.
--
When I was on, it was a vax 750 running BSD with just the start
of all that community stuff. I just used it for mail and reading
news, from a normal shell.
--
The Foothill/Wierd/Halted thing was too damn great.
--
Weird Stuff in Milpitas was great. That was where I found
most of my Xerox stuff. With 20/20 hindsight (and more space)
I should have grabbed things like the PDP12 that came in and
the PERQ 1.
Halted didn't (and still doesn't) do much for me. I got to
know the last batch of folks running Haltek pretty well, and
I was the one that bought their data book collection when they
were forced out.
> The earliest
> development software was full of Xerox copyright notices...
The only direct connection I can think of (which wouldn't have
contained Xerox copyrights) was Bill Duval's assembler, which
was developed on an Alto. The SUMACC port of PCC would have had
lots of MIT/ATT (c)'s, though.
There may have been some Silicon Valley Software (c)'s in things
like the PASCAL compiler.
>From age 15 to 17, I worked after-school at a car stereo company, which,
back then (1968+) meant 8-track mostly, some 4T, and a few 'exotic'
cassette players.
One late spring afternoon, after having been 'out' most of the night,
full day of school, warm late afternoon. music playing - John fell asleep
in the middle of replacing a fried transistor and nodded off - actually I
nodded *onto* my soldering iron and was awakend by the smell and the
sizzle of a neat, surf-board shaped patch of skin being branded into my
*forehead*.
So I got to spend the next three weeks going to classes and explaining
the tribal markings I'd given myself.
Of course, over the years, I've grabbed my share of the stupid end of
hot irons, including dropping one while I was working on the power supply
of my [ob:classiccmp] PDP11/34.
Cheers
John
PS: I was *not*, however, using Nassau solder. I was saving *that* for
eBay... ;}
