Il giorno lun, 15/07/2013 alle 13.15 -0400, Mark S Waterbury ha scritto:
The 5363 was a "hybrid" machine -- IBM was
starting to use some
technology (like the ISA bus, memory cards, etc.) in these machines, to
make them smaller and more cost-efficient. The 5363 was the last model
of System/36 prouced -- it actually came out after the 5364 "Baby/36" model.
The System/36 family was developed and produced by "GSD" (General
Systems Division) -- the same folks who produced the IBM PC.
All of the System/36 machine did use an IOP (what were called "channels"
on System/34) -- to off-load the work of managing I/O from the main CPU
... that would explain the 286 processor to "manage" the I/O queue ...
and the memory for I/O buffers, etc.
This card was not running anything like PC-DOS -- it would have an
embedded control program in ROM on-board for the IOP software.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for your kind answer.
Two questions are still unanswered.
1) Why the ROMs in the IOP card contain a code very similar to the
PC-one, i.e. tests and messages for keyboard
2) the DE-9 female connector on the back...
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