From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk
Hi Chris
All of the I/O, Floppy, video, modem and such, are through custom
Canon chips. I'm told that they emulate standard chips because
they originally built the prototypes with standard off the shelf parts.
Ouch!. Before I read that, the Cat was high uop on my (mental) list of
desirable machines. Now it's at the bottom :-(.
How much is known about these ICs? Software interface (registers, etc)?
Pinouts?
-tony
Hi Tony
The fail rate on these parts is quite low. I know a fellow in Oregon
that uses around 6 of these daily in his business. The only fails he's
had is one CRT and several disk drives. He has been using them
for years!
The disk drive is hard to find. They have a 20 pin ribbon cable intead
of the more standard cable connector. This cable supplies the power as well.
Like I said, these do emulate standard off the shelf parts, it
is just that I've not dug into the code enough to see what
might be the particular part used. I've seen the low level disk code
and it look familiar. I think it is 765 but don't quoke me on that.
The display is a question. I know there are several value in the init
routine that are sent to it but I have no idea what it might be.
The video is bit mapped in RAM so doing graphics is easy enough.
Anyway, the price is most likely higher than what you might expect.
The last one on ebay went for around $800. Unless your just lucky
( Like another I know on this list ) it may not seem worth getting.
I payed about $250 for mine ( including shipping ) and was happy
( lucky types find them for $25 ).
Dwight
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