27 Apr
2005
27 Apr
'05
7:39 p.m.
On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:02:48 +0100 (BST)
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
[[SA cards]
I can remember when the 8088 clone motherboards all still came with a
full schematic. I even still have some of those manuals. It used to be
possible to use the schematic from just about ANY clone motherboard to
troubleshoot and repair any other, because the 'cloning' was that exact,
right down to the 74xx chip level, and often IC part number. It made
troubleshooting those motherboards down to the component level pretty
easy.
They really WERE clones.
floppy drives? Maybe a better question; are they
any cards worth
saving?
Ones I would certainly save include :
Any original IBM cards, as docuemtned in the Techrefs (I am still
dreaming of finding a Professional Graphics Controller...)
'Famous' cards, like the original Hercules graphics card, AST Sixpack,
etc
Any lab/realtime cards (digital and analogue I/O, etc)
Anythign with a user-programmable processor on it (this includes DSP
cards, transputer cards, coprocessors, etc)
I am keeping all the disk controller cards,
memory expansion cards,
and any specialized cards. Are they any Apple IIx cards worth
saving? My
For the Apple ][, I'd keep anything apart from the Disk // card (which
is very common). Language cards are also pretty easy to find.
Lab I/O cards, coproesseors (at least the Z80 and 6809 exist), serial
ports (common, but very useful to transfer data to the Apple from a
PC) etc are worth saving.
general rule there has been that if I have the
docs, they are worth
saving.
Depends on how good the docs are :-). The bit of paper you get with
no-name PC multi-I/O cards probably doesn't count. Having a real
manual with programming details and maybe even a schematic would
certainly cause me to save the card (and the manual, of course).