15 Jun
2002
15 Jun
'02
10:47 p.m.
That's true, but CompuPro hardware of different families, though they all
claimed compatibility with S-100, didn't even work in different CompuPro
environments, and that wasn't just after the adoption of the standard. In
fact, CompuPro/Bill Godbout was instrumental in watering down the standard to
such extent that it essentially guaranteed the demise of the S-100, since it
allowed for so much incompatibility that not even they could manage it.
The power supply and its management was the least of your worries with their
hardware. However, if your board required +/- 15, which was pretty easily
regulated from the +/- 16, which was seldom limited to 16, you'd be in real
trouble with the 12 volt bipolar supply.
Further, I'd say, though it's not "new" nowadays, it was practiced only
a
short time in the life of the S-100. I think the deviation from the standard
practices, not necessarily the "standard," was what led to its death,
actually.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Shoppa" <classiccmp(a)trailing-edge.com>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2002 8:56 PM
Subject: Re: IMSAI News?
> My initial reading (more or less my last) of the
spec for the new Imsai is
> that the power supply is a regulated switcher that provides the
"standard"
> voltages (though they're no longer standard) of +/- 5 and +/- 12 volts.
> Normal S-100 hardware had on-board regulation, hence expected to see +8
and
+/- 16 on the
bus.
This isn't awfully new in the S-100/IEEE696 world; in the 80's Compupro
sold a number of IEEE696 systems that distributed regulated +5V instead of
unregulated ~8V, courtesy of a switching power supply.
To put a "regular" S-100 board in all you had to do was jumper around
its on-board voltage regulators, no big deal.
Tim.