On 10/10/2005 at 3:29 PM Joe R. wrote:
Speaking of SBCs. Does anyone know anything about an
Intel 80C186/80C188
Evaluation Board?
Can't help with the evaluation board, but the mention of the 80186 reminds me of a
system I worked on (Durango Poppy) using one (an added 80286 was an option if you wanted
to run Unix).
It's a great chip for its time with DMA done the right way and lots of I/O pins.
Unfortunately, any programs that play with PC hardware are doomed to failure.
I've got a little FAX receiver box that was designed to fit between a printer and a PC
and would either print FAXen as received or store them on a DOS-formatted 1.44MB floppy
drive that was part of the unit. It uses an 80C188 and I recall looking at the 27C256
BIOS and noting that it implemented many of the PC BIOS calls, particularly those for
diskette I/O. It has 256K of RAM. The thing isn't much bigger than a floppy drive
and is powered by a wall wart. It'd make a neat little CP/M-86 system if I ever got
around to programming it.
But this brings up a question--how many early non-PC PC's are there wandering around?
IOW, things that have the ability to run a full operating system, but aren't PC's
per se. My DSL model is certainly one--runs Linux (just telnet to it and you get a
login).
Cheers,
Chuck