Carlos,
I can't tell you much about them but I've seen the ASCI systems. I went
to an auction at Brevard Community College several years ago and they had a
pile of them. However they also had a pile of HP 5036 trainers so I spent
all my money buying them instead :-) I do remember that there were several
different untis for the ASCI systems but I don't remember what the non-CPU
units did. The guy that bought them turned around and sold all of them on
E-bay shortly afterwards. I've also seen others on E-bay. I expect that if
you set up a favorite search routine there and have it notify you when new
ones are posted you'll find one sooner or later.
Joe
At 10:16 AM 4/11/05 -0400, you wrote:
I think that I've asked about this system before.
It seems
to be a 6800 training system with hex keypad and 4 digit display,
rs-232 and perhaps a cassette interface. It is labeled
"ASCI u68" (the "u" is a greek mu) and "SYSYEM X".
Apparently, it might have been known also as "micro mule II",
according to a vey old sale ad that I found. It is nicely
built on a black metallic chassis with wooden sides and a
flip-over acrylic top.
The serial interface seems to adjust to the terminal's baud
but insists on using 7bit, odd parity. I've been able to
examine and change the memory's contents using the hex keypad.
There's a flap for a card edge connector that remains free;
I guess it is probably for the cassette (I haven't yet traced
the thing).
Unfortunately, my web searches have yielded lots of info about
ASCI supercomputers, misspellings of ASCII and in one
occasion a misspelling of micromole by some chemist,
but nothing useful about this system. There seems to be one in
the Topeka Computing Museum collection
http://www.gateman.com/museum/t3.html
So, does anybody have info about this system?
Carlos.
--
Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez email: carlos_murillo at
skipthispartieee.org
Dean of Engineering, Universidad Autonoma de Manizales, Manizales, Colombia
----
"Western civilization... thought like the greeks, organized itself like
the romans and believed in itself like the hebrew." -- Ortega y Gasset.