My sister-in-law works at the Post Office and knows lots of the
local customers. She happened to learn that one gentleman had
some "old computers" in the attic. When I called him, it turned
out to be an XOR S-100 box w/dual 8" drives, a Liberty 100
terminal, and some loose S-100 cards (including a Cromemco
serial/parallel card still in the shrink wrap, a few 8K cards
(2102 and 2114-based) and a couple of SMS video cards, one as
yet unstuffed with the chips under plastic).
No OS, few docs (some of the cards _do_ have manuals).
He kept the S-100 prototype card he once wrapped for his first CPU
(sockets intact, chips missing, wires removed).
The sad news is that he mentioned that he used to have an old computer
that he threw out... his son brought it home ($20 at a yard sale)
back when Dad had a 386 in the living room - it was a Digital Group
machine. :-(
So... Anyone have any info on XOR boxen? I have a CP/M disk for
the C-128 and stuff for the Kaypro, but nothing on 8". Can I mail
anyone blank disks to be copied onto? What sort of information
would I have to provide to be able to put together a compatible
disk? Brand of disk controller? Type and manufacturer of CPU card?
Serial card vendor?
Also, how did S-100 video cards work? Did you still have a console
terminal but use the video card as a secondary peripheral?
-ethan
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Having once a S-100 computer (1985) I bought a used
VDM-1 video card. Do the bumps one has in life, all
I have today is the dog eared manual. ( no schematic
or pc board). The display is 16 lines of 64 characters.
Writing to a I/O port sets up the video start address
1K of display memory is mapped to 1k of real memory.
CR , VT look to be the only control characters implemented.
The driver program listed is to patch basic. It looks like
you have a TTY ( i/o device and paper tape reader ) as your
main console until you save a patched basic. ( the paper tape
reader still loads basic )
--
Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu *