16 Dec
2002
16 Dec
'02
4:28 p.m.
I am trying to identify various computers that have had
their ports
situated in the front of the chassis as opposed to the back.
The Atari 800 would be one example (game ports in the front). Are there
any other examples anyone can think of, especially where peripheral (disk,
printer) or perhaps network ports are concerned?
Didn't the IBM PCjr have two aux sockets on the front for game cartridges
and I thought there was a printer interface that could use those sockets,
and a floppy drive interface as well (could be wrong).
And of course Mac's up to the Mac Plus have the keyboard port in the
front, as well as I have seen some old PC clones like that (but I suspect
that isn't exactly what you are looking for).
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
16 Dec
16 Dec
4:55 p.m.
On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 22:28, chris wrote:
Didn't the IBM PCjr have two aux sockets on the
front for game cartridges
and I thought there was a printer interface that could use those sockets,
and a floppy drive interface as well (could be wrong).
The only front-facing "ports" on the jr were the cartridge slots (if you
count those). There were cartridges that could provide connections to
other devices, but these were not very common. Besides the hole for the
infra-red port on the front of the jr, the face is portless.
The parallel port was added via a sidecar which would have placed the
DB-25 on the rear of the machine. There were *many* was to add floppies
to the jr, but the cartridge ports were not one of them.
Jeff
And of course Mac's up to the Mac Plus have the keyboard port in the
front, as well as I have seen some old PC clones like that (but I suspect
that isn't exactly what you are looking for).
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
5:03 p.m.
Was not the Osborne I so designed? ISTR, from the one I had, that
everything was on the front panel and the case was whole, unlike the
Compaqs, with thier PC-slot and Power access doors on the sides.
Cheers and Best of the Season
John
5:21 p.m.
Yup, the whole shebang. External Battery, keyboard, printer, video,
serial RS232 and Modem. BTW what was the difference between the
modem and RS232 ports ?
Lawrence
On 16 Dec 2002, , John Lawson wrote:
Was not the Osborne I so designed? ISTR, from the one I had, that
everything was on the front panel and the case was whole, unlike the
Compaqs, with thier PC-slot and Power access doors on the sides.
Cheers and Best of the Season
John
lgwalker(a)mts.net
bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com
5:35 p.m.
Lawrence Walker wrote:
Yup, the whole shebang. External Battery, keyboard, printer, video,
serial RS232 and Modem. BTW what was the difference between the
modem and RS232 ports ?
Lawrence
Besides number of pins . . . .
I think the 9 pin Modem port was for the accessory modem and has DC
feeding the box that fits in the disk bay. The RS232 could be
configured to drive a serial printer which was the common interface back
then, especially on daisywheels.
Gary Hildebrand
St. Joseph, MO
10:26 p.m.
Was not the Osborne I so designed? ISTR, from the
one I had, that
everything was on the front panel and the case was whole, unlike the
It is, and there's even more on the front of the Executive: two serial RS-232s,
an IEEE-488, external video and composite video.
I think perhaps the PC Traveler had some sort of 25 pin port in the front.
-W
17 Dec
17 Dec
8:15 a.m.
On a machine that doesn't sustain much floppy activity,
(or uses external drives), if you face the disk drives towards the back,
then the ports on your PC are out front where God intended.
8:43 a.m.
On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
On a machine that doesn't sustain much floppy
activity,
(or uses external drives), if you face the disk drives towards the back,
then the ports on your PC are out front where God intended.
Indeed, a friend of mine who owns a business that makes rackmount systems
made a special model for a customer where they pretty much did this. They
put the mounting flange on the back of the box, making it the front, and
added cut-outs for the disk drives.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
2:34 p.m.
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3:17 p.m.
> On a machine that doesn't sustain much floppy
activity,
> (or uses external drives), if you face the disk drives towards the back,
> then the ports on your PC are out front where God intended.
On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, Tony Duell wrote:
I tired that on my Z90, but it sure was hard to type
on the keyboard, and
impossible to read the screen ;-)
All though it would, indeed, be VERY tiring, you could use the whole
machine as a wrist rest, and reach over it to keyboard. You could mount a
mirror on the wall for reading the screen. It might help to reverse the
horizontal scan?
18 Dec
18 Dec
1:06 p.m.
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17 Dec
17 Dec
2:31 p.m.
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3:15 p.m.
Didn't the IBM PCjr have two aux sockets on the
front for game cartridges
and I thought there was a printer interface that could use those sockets,
and a floppy drive interface as well (could be wrong).
I'm hesitant to say that ANYTHING is impossible, nor never existed.
But the only thing that I have ever seen the front sockets of the Jr used
for was ROM cartridges.
The printer interface(s) for the Jr consisted of a built-in (port in
back) serial interface (along with a serial "PCJr printer"), and a
parallel port option in sidecars (IBM did one that was just a parallel
port, most others did multi-function)
There was no "external" connector for floppy interface on the Jr. until
you did what most of us did, and cut a hole in the case.
7888
days inactive
7890
days old
12 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cb＠mythtech.net -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
foo＠siconic.com -
ghldbrd＠ccp.com -
jingber＠ix.netcom.com -
jpl15＠panix.com -
lgwalker＠mts.net -
wmsmith＠earthlink.net