21 Sep
2007
21 Sep
'07
11:22 a.m.
Kind of posting on a whim that this might be something obvious...
All of the S100 systems I've seen to date have comprised a backplane and then
cards for various system components - including CPU and memory. However, I
unearthed one today which held much of the system logic on the backplane
itself (i.e. more like a modern-day PC motherboard - I'd heard such things
existed, but this is the first one I've actually seen).
Unfortunately I forgot to bring the thing home with me, so I'm a bit light on
remembered details (but can get more tomorrow if needs be). However, it
appeared to have both an 8088 and 8085 CPU on board, memory, what is probably
ROM, a handful of S100-bus [1] connectors, parallel port, a light-pen port
(unusual!), plus a few other ports (at least one was serial I expect). There
were a few other IDC-style pin headers too - perhaps for some sort of storage,
but none of them were obviously labeled as to function.
Sound familiar to anyone?
[1] Of course the only thing to make me think it's S100 is that the connectors
are the right type; there's a possibility that it's some totally random bus
specific to whatever system this is :-)
cheers
Jules
21 Sep
21 Sep
12:42 p.m.
Rumor has it that Jules Richardson may have mentioned these words:
Kind of posting on a whim that this might be something
obvious...
[snip]
Unfortunately I forgot to bring the thing home with me, so I'm a bit light
on remembered details (but can get more tomorrow if needs be). However, it
appeared to have both an 8088 and 8085 CPU on board, memory, what is
probably ROM, a handful of S100-bus [1] connectors, parallel port, a
light-pen port (unusual!), plus a few other ports (at least one was serial
I expect). There were a few other IDC-style pin headers too - perhaps for
some sort of storage, but none of them were obviously labeled as to function.
Sound familiar to anyone?
Sounds kinda like a motherboard for a Heath/Zenith... Z100? Was that the
designation? Those two processors were on the Z100 mobo... if you need to
see a picture, I can dig the mobo of one out of the crypt^Wbasement tonite...
Here's a not-so-great picture of the mobo for one:
http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/z100bdx.jpg
The Z-100 will take S-100 cards.
Hope this helps!
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | A new truth in advertising slogan
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy...
zmerch at 30below.com | ...in oxymoron!"
1:56 p.m.
On 21 Sep 2007 at 12:42, Roger Merchberger wrote:
Sounds kinda like a motherboard for a Heath/Zenith...
Z100? Was that the
designation? Those two processors were on the Z100 mobo... if you need to
see a picture, I can dig the mobo of one out of the crypt^Wbasement tonite...
Z-110/H-110 without built-in monitor; Z-120/H-120 with. 4 S-100
slots. Completely incompatible with IBM 5150, but fairly popular
when it first came out. The "H" models are the Heathkit "make your
own cold solder joints" form, but otherwise the same as the Zenith
units.
Unlike the Rainbow, the use of the 8085 was probably not such a great
idea after Heath/Zenith had been producing Z-80 systems.
Cheers,
Chuck
2:07 p.m.
On Friday 21 September 2007 13:56, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Unlike the Rainbow, the use of the 8085 was probably
not such a great
idea after Heath/Zenith had been producing Z-80 systems.
I wonder why they went with that part? I seem to remember some others that
used it as well, though specifics are not coming to mind at the moment. I
have a bunch of those on hand, and think about doing something with them
from time to time. It's a fairly easy chip to use,
with an eprom and a ram
chip and a single address latch, I just haven't
decided yet what I'm gonna
do with it.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
4:01 p.m.
On 21 Sep 2007 at 14:07, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
I wonder why they went with that part? I seem to
remember some others that
used it as well, though specifics are not coming to mind at the moment. I
have a bunch of those on hand, and think about doing something with them
from time to time. It's a fairly easy chip to use, with an eprom and a ram
chip and a single address latch, I just haven't decided yet what I'm gonna
do with it.
Compupro 85/88 board; my own Durango F-85 and a host of others. If
you can find some of the support chips (8155, 8755), the parts count
can be very low, given the vintage of the 8085.
I suspect that the reason 8088/8085 pairs were fairly common in
comparison to Z80/8088 pairs was that timings and buses on the 8088
and 8085 are *very* similar and getting them to work with 8000-series
peripherals was very easy. IIRC, one could even replace an 8085 with
an 8088 (assuming you were restricting it to 64K addressing) with a
minimum of "glue". Both multiplex the data lines on A0-A7 the same
way.
I suspect it might be easier to substitute an NSC800 for an 8085 if
Z80 functionality is needed than trying to shoehorn in a Z80.
Cheers,
Chuck
4:35 p.m.
On Friday 21 September 2007 16:01, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 21 Sep 2007 at 14:07, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
Compupro was the one that was hanging out there at the edge of recall...
I may have some of those support chips, too. 8155 (and 8156, which is the
same part with a different select pin polarity if I'm remembering right)
sound real familiar. I have the 8085 Cookbook and a few others that Sams put
out, one covering this text editor and assembler (which I didn't really care
for, but...). No interest in the ROM-based 8355 and I've never seen the
EPROM-based 8755. The relative i/o and RAM address mapping of those parts
gets a little confusing, though, and the book is a bit less clear than it
could be on that aspect of it.
I wonder why they went with that part? I seem to
remember some others
that used it as well, though specifics are not coming to mind at the
moment. I have a bunch of those on hand, and think about doing
something with them from time to time. It's a fairly easy chip to use,
with an eprom and a ram chip and a single address latch, I just haven't
decided yet what I'm gonna do with it.
Compupro 85/88 board; my own Durango F-85 and a host of others. If
you can find some of the support chips (8155, 8755), the parts count
can be very low, given the vintage of the 8085. I suspect that the reason 8088/8085 pairs were fairly
common in
comparison to Z80/8088 pairs was that timings and buses on the 8088
and 8085 are *very* similar and getting them to work with 8000-series
peripherals was very easy. IIRC, one could even replace an 8085 with
an 8088 (assuming you were restricting it to 64K addressing) with a
minimum of "glue". Both multiplex the data lines on A0-A7 the same
way.
Ah.
I'd never really looked at the 8088 and later parts all that much, or to that
level of detail.
I suspect it might be easier to substitute an NSC800
for an 8085 if
Z80 functionality is needed than trying to shoehorn in a Z80.
That's another part I have no familiarity with at all at this point in time,
though of course I've heard of it.
With regard to what little programming I've done, the thing I like most about
the z80 is relative jumps, which makes relocatable code easy to do. The
other big deal is the alternate register set and the index registers, which
I really haven't used all that much.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
3:06 p.m.
Roger Merchberger wrote:
Here's a not-so-great picture of the mobo for
one:
http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/z100bdx.jpg
Yep, that's the one - thanks :-) Seems like it might be an interesting beast,
anyway...
cheers
Jules
4:29 p.m.
On Friday 21 September 2007 15:06, Jules Richardson wrote:
Roger Merchberger wrote:
Around the time that the Z100 and Z150, 151, etc. machines were out, I was
a ZDS service center. I think there were a couple of different versions of
their peecee compatible involving differerent degrees of integration, 3 vs.
4 boards in the system or something like that. Anyhow, *somewhere* I have
pretty complete docs on that stuff, along with what monitors and printers
and such were out at that point in time.
We didn't keep that up though. I'd gone for my initial training to Philly, a
few hours drive for me, and a one-night stay in a motel for a two-day
seminar that covered _all_ of that stuff. Later on Zenith decided that they
were going to do away with handling things through the distribution chain and
was gonna centralize everything, and get more bureaucratic while they were
at it -- I'd need to submit a "batch ticket" along with a *single* warranty
claim. But the real deal-killer for me was the requirement that I'd have to
make _four_ separate trips (by air, too far to drive) to Chicago, and spend
a total of _three weeks_ (not continuously, unfortunately) attending these
seminars, and was expected to _pay_ for them -- a total of a couple of
thousand all total, which was way more than what we were making in the
servicing of this stuff, even though I was handling military installations
of it and such.
Anyhow, I still have all those docs, if anybody needs some, though I expect
that it'd take me quite a while to dig them out...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
Here's a not-so-great picture of the mobo for
one:
http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/z100bdx.jpg
Yep, that's the one - thanks :-) Seems like it might be an interesting
beast, anyway...
cheers
Jules 
4:16 p.m.
Sounds like it may be Heath/Zenith Z100
The other Bob
On Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:22:08 +0100, Jules Richardson wrote:
Kind of posting on a whim that this might be something
obvious...
All of the S100 systems I've seen to date have
comprised a backplane and then
cards for various system components - including CPU and memory. However, I
unearthed one today which held much of the system logic on the backplane
itself (i.e. more like a modern-day PC motherboard - I'd heard such things
existed, but this is the first one I've actually seen).
Unfortunately I forgot to bring the thing home with me,
so I'm a bit light on
remembered details (but can get more tomorrow if needs be). However, it
appeared to have both an 8088 and 8085 CPU on board, memory, what is probably
ROM, a handful of S100-bus [1] connectors, parallel port, a light-pen port
(unusual!), plus a few other ports (at least one was serial I expect). There
were a few other IDC-style pin headers too - perhaps for some sort of storage,
but none of them were obviously labeled as to function.
Sound familiar to anyone?
[1] Of course the only thing to make me think it's
S100 is that the connectors
are the right type; there's a possibility that it's some totally random bus
specific to whatever system this is :-)
cheers
Jules
22 Sep
22 Sep
9:49 a.m.
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
[1] Of course the only thing to make me think it's
S100 is that the connectors
are the right type; there's a possibility that it's some totally random bus
specific to whatever system this is :-)
There are in fact several bus systems out there that use the 100-pin
edge connectors.
But... not all of them use the same size board, or have the connector
centered in the same place.
Tracing out the beefy power traces will tell you pretty quickly whether
this is S-100 like or not.
Another identifier: count ground lines. If there are enough, it's
not S-100 :-).
Of course, the critics among us will insist that there was not one
S-100 bus, but in fact hundreds of S-100 busses, all vaguely similar yet
incompatible with each other until you go in and move jumpers and
cut traces, and even then you're lucky if everything works in the
end !
Tim.
6:35 p.m.
[1] Of course
the only thing to make me think it's S100 is that the connectors
are the right type; there's a possibility that it's some totally random bus
specific to whatever system this is :-)
There are in fact several bus systems out there that use the 100-pin
edge connectors. But... not all of them use the same size board, or
have the connector
-tony
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