9 May
2017
9 May
'17
6:15 p.m.
Date: Mon, 8 May 2017 21:02:39 -0400
From: william degnan <billdegnan at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: BETSI Expander for the Commodore PET
On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 8:35 PM, John Ball via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
BTW, I spoke with Don over dinner after the show and he told me that his
son apparently
archived some stuff when he moved out to NV (he had told me earlier that
most of his
machines got sold/trashed/lost during his divorce ). I particularly asked
him to look for
one of the S100 expansion boards... Will let you know if he found any...
Earl
So it seems in the early days of the PET a
company by the name of
Forethought Prouducts sold an expansion module called the BETSI which
plugged into the expansion bus of the PET and gave you four S100 slots.
If
you google around you can find a flyer
advertising the unit and optional
power supply and the owners manual which touches on assembly, component
locations and the schematics. It talks about adding sound voards,
additional
video outputs, expanding ram and attaching directly to a larger S100
frame.
Beyond that I can find absolutely nothing else
about it, much less a more
recent photo of one. Has anyone here ever used one? How practical were
they
in reality? Suppose I went and built one. Does
anyone have the PCB layout
templates so I could get a board etched or will I have to stick to the
schematic and build one by hand?
-John
At VCF SE Don French talked about the S100 expansion he created for the TRS
80 Model 1. Guess these did not meet with much success.