Northstar CPU Card in Regular S100 Bus? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

12 Dec 1999

That should certainly be the case with the N* CPU I recently gave to one of
the list participants.  It had no hardware on board which would prevent it
...
 from working with pretty much any other S-100 hardware,
aside from the usual risk, since there were no real standards, even after the
adoption of the
IEEE P696 standard.  With more signals than were needed, it was always
possible another maker's card might expect different combinations of signals
to do the same job.

Dick

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Clifton - KC0CUE &lt;wirehead(a)retrocomputing.com&gt;
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
&lt;classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu&gt;
Date: Sunday, December 12, 1999 3:00 PM
Subject: Northstar CPU Card in Regular S100 Bus?

...

I have a weird question.  Could a Northstar MPU-A be used in a normal S100 bus
...
 chassis with other cards to provide console, disk, i/o,
memory functions?

If no, why not?

If yes, what issues can arise from doing this?

The reason I ask is that I have a nice clean empty TEI chassis, a Northstar CPU
...
 cards, some memory boards, an SMB multifunction i/o
card and a Disk Jockey
2D.  I'm sure the thing would end up being fairly weird, but I don't care
about
that.

Just exploring ideas for misc hardware sitting around my basement.

Anthony Clifton