FW: [N8VEM-S100:575] S-100 8086 Up and Runing

Hi Dave! Thanks! The possibilities are pretty good if you are patient. John and I are developing two new boards to address this very issue. The current S-100 8086 CPU board runs CP/M-86+ and MSDOS 4.01. I imagine it could run FreeDOS as well if someone were to port it. However for really good PC like compatibility you'll want these two boards we are working on: 1. S-100 MS-DOS Support board Adds the essential guts of a PC/AT motherboard minus CPU and RAM to the S-100 bus. In development and approaching initial "production" status in probably 6-8 weeks. http://s100computers.com/My%20System%20Pages/MSDOS%20Board/MSDOS%20Board.htm http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/w/browse/#view=ViewFolder&param=S-100%20MS… 20Support%20Board 2. S-100 VGA Adds a GD5420 Super VGA chip to S-100 bus. Has just started development. John has the initial prototype for build and test -- no ETA. http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/w/browse/#view=ViewFolder&param=S-100%20VGA In theory, with the above boards with a S-100 8086 CPU board and S-100 4MB SRAM you could build a more or less PC/AT compatible S-100 system. This should dramatically add to the amount of available software for your system. There is also a S-100 80286 CPU board in development. All the S-100 CPU boards are or will be TMI compatible to allow multiple CPU bus masters. Apparently at least one N8VEM builder has a system which is demonstrating S-100 8086 CPU and S-100 Z80 CPU dual masters. http://groups.google.com/group/n8vem-s100/browse_thread/thread/235e20227d03f 046 This is not the only example but the most recent and has readily available information online. It is an all S100computers.com/N8VEM system except for the motherboard. Unfortunately the number of S-100 boards we've got now (24) greatly exceeds the number of slots (8) on the S-100 backplane PCB. I guess that means a larger S-100 backplane PCB is forcing its way into the job queue. ;-) Hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch