13 Jun
2002
13 Jun
'02
3:59 p.m.
I found two interesting items today.
One is a PET 2001-8. It has the regular keyboard. Inside was an
"expandaram" board that added additional RAM and some peripheral slots for
the PET. The cards plugged in looked a lot like Apple ][ cards in their
form factor but I assume this is some proprietary bus. Anyone have info
on this?
Also, found a little module that apparently plugs somewhere into an Atari
ST. It's called the Magic Sac+ and on it it says "Turns your Atari into a
Mac". Anyone ever use one of these? Where on the ST would this plug in
to? Or is it for the Mega ST perhaps?
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 *
13 Jun
13 Jun
4:05 p.m.
One is a PET 2001-8. It has the regular keyboard.
Inside was an
"expandaram" board that added additional RAM and some
peripheral slots
for the PET. The cards plugged in looked a lot like Apple ][ cards in
their form factor but I assume this is some proprietary bus. Anyone
have info on this?
I have one of these ExpandaRam board in my Pet 2001. I have a 5.25" disk
drive that plugs into one slot, and a ROM card that contains the disk
O/S that plugs into the other slot. I don't know if they made any other
peripherals that plugged into those spots.
The disk drive unit has 2 5.25" drives in it. They were not compatible
with the Commodore drives. If you're interested, I can dig mine out and
post a photo.
- Bob
4:08 p.m.
On Thu, 13 Jun 2002, Sellam Ismail wrote:
Also, found a little module that apparently plugs
somewhere into an Atari
ST. It's called the Magic Sac+ and on it it says "Turns your Atari into a
Mac". Anyone ever use one of these? Where on the ST would this plug in
to? Or is it for the Mega ST perhaps?
I want it!
My ST has a cartridge interface at the left side, facing the kbd.
IIRC, it's a card-edge connection about 1 3/4 inches wide.
Doc
4:24 p.m.
Hi Sellam....
MagicSAC was designed by a guy named David Small... you plug original
Mac ROM's into the module and it plugs into the cartridge port on any Atari
ST system and runs Mac software perfectly.... it was a great emulation
system. Interesting story.... David was pulling ROM's out of the
dumpsters at Apple and reselling them, Apple got wind of this and sued David
and stopped throwing the ROM's away and started to sell them to resellers.
The suit was dropped and MagicSac continued on into the early 90s
Curt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sellam Ismail" <foo(a)siconic.com
To: "Classic Computers Mailing List" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 11:59 PM
Subject: PET and Magic Sac+
I found two interesting items today.
One is a PET 2001-8. It has the regular keyboard. Inside was an
"expandaram" board that added additional RAM and some peripheral slots for
the PET. The cards plugged in looked a lot like Apple ][ cards in their
form factor but I assume this is some proprietary bus. Anyone have info
on this?
Also, found a little module that apparently plugs somewhere into an Atari
ST. It's called the Magic Sac+ and on it it says "Turns your Atari into a
Mac". Anyone ever use one of these? Where on the ST would this plug in
to? Or is it for the Mega ST perhaps?
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 *
6:46 p.m.
New subject: Cosmac
Anyone have any idea what this is or what it does?
http://home.earthlink.net/~wmsmith/_uimages/Cosmac.jpg
10:47 p.m.
Sellam Ismail wrote:
Also, found a little module that apparently plugs
somewhere into an Atari
ST. It's called the Magic Sac+ and on it it says "Turns your Atari into a
Mac". Anyone ever use one of these? Where on the ST would this plug in
to?
It goes in the Atari's cartridge port, a little-used connector on the
side of the machine. Used an unusual type of edge connector, and
hardly any software was supplied on cartridges. Some sound samplers
used it, though. I think the signals available were read-only,
fine for ROMs, but preventing the use of the slot for most types
of peripherals.
--
John Honniball
coredump(a)gifford.co.uk
14 Jun
14 Jun
12:23 a.m.
At 08:59 PM 6/13/2002 -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote:
Also, found a little module that apparently plugs
somewhere into an Atari
ST. It's called the Magic Sac+ and on it it says "Turns your Atari into a
Mac". Anyone ever use one of these? Where on the ST would this plug in
to? Or is it for the Mega ST perhaps?
And Dave Small did a version for the Amiga, too, I seem to
remember his exhibiting at an Amiga conference back when.
I think had or have a Mac emulator for the Amiga based
on a Mac ROM, but I don't think it was Small's. I had
the one that also let you plug in a Mac-compatible floppy.
- John
1:02 a.m.
It goes in the Atari's cartridge port, a
little-used connector on the
side of the machine. Used an unusual type of edge connector, and
hardly any software was supplied on cartridges. Some sound samplers
used it, though. I think the signals available were read-only,
fine for ROMs, but preventing the use of the slot for most types
of peripherals.
I've not seen many ROM cartridges for it but there was a nice
VT-100 emulation cartridge available for it.
Jeff
--
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.cchaven.com
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
1:04 a.m.
And Dave Small did a version for the Amiga, too, I seem
to
remember his exhibiting at an Amiga conference back when.
I think had or have a Mac emulator for the Amiga based
on a Mac ROM, but I don't think it was Small's. I had
the one that also let you plug in a Mac-compatible floppy.
The main Mac emulation boards for the Amiga were the Amax and
the Emplant, though the Emplant didn't support the use of the
400k/800k Mac disks or floppy drive. It did have Mac serial and SCSI
ports though.
Jeff
--
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.cchaven.com
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
1:04 a.m.
New subject: Cosmac
At 11:46 PM 6/13/2002 -0700, you wrote:
Anyone have any idea what this is or what it does?
http://home.earthlink.net/~wmsmith/_uimages/Cosmac.jpg
A rack-mount development system for the RCA Cosmac 1802 CPU?
Nice find.
- John
2:57 a.m.
On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Bob Lafleur wrote:
I have one of these ExpandaRam board in my Pet 2001. I
have a 5.25" disk
drive that plugs into one slot, and a ROM card that contains the disk
O/S that plugs into the other slot. I don't know if they made any other
peripherals that plugged into those spots.
Oh yes, I should have mentioned the peripherals plugged in. One was a
disk contoller, and the computer also came with an external dual 5.25"
disk drive box. One was a ROM card as you mentioned (now I know what
that was for). And there was a third but I didn't pay enough attention
to it. I'll double check next time I'm at my warehouse.
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 *
3:01 a.m.
New subject: Cosmac
On Thu, 13 Jun 2002, Wayne M. Smith wrote:
Anyone have any idea what this is or what it does?
http://home.earthlink.net/~wmsmith/_uimages/Cosmac.jpg
Ooooooh! You've found the very rare rackmount version of the Cosmac
development system.
Score o' the Month by far.
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 *
5:46 a.m.
New subject: Cosmac
From: Wayne M. Smith
Anyone have any idea what this is or what it does?
http://home.earthlink.net/~wmsmith/_uimages/Cosmac.jpg
Cool! That looks like a CDS 1 or CDS II maybe. They use the COSMAC
Microboard Universal Backplane and can nest a number of cool RCA cards (CPU,
mem, i/o, disk, color video, etc..). Send some card numbers. I've got docs
on lot of them here.
Nice find.
;)
- Mike: dogas(a)bellsouth.net
6:55 a.m.
I have a couple of these. It has Mac ROM chips and is powered by a coin-
style battery. It plugs into the slot on the left side next to the MIDI which was
usually used for a Real-time clock or music carts. I have the software for it if
you'd like. There was also a PC emulator called PC Ditto which would run
Doze apps. Unbearably slow. The Magic Sac was much better.
Lawrence
Also, found a little module that apparently plugs
somewhere into an Atari
ST. It's called the Magic Sac+ and on it it says "Turns your Atari into a
Mac". Anyone ever use one of these? Where on the ST would this plug in
to? Or is it for the Mega ST perhaps?
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 *
lgwalker(a)mts.net
bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com
7:01 a.m.
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11:12 a.m.
You're much better utilizing the ASCI Port for such things as opposed to the
cart port. The machine was very rushed in design from July 84 to get it
out the door for April 85. The Tramiels thought they were going to walk
into Atari and own the Amiga chipset and Atari 1850XL computer designs,
however on June 30th when the chipset was supposed to be delivered to Atari,
Amiga delivered a check for $500,000 to Atari to pay them back the money
they gave to Amiga to complete the chipset. So they went into breach of
contract and Atari sued them on Aug 13, 1984. The court decision in 87 was
a closed one, and I'm still trying to get a definitive answer on what the
true outcome was. So without the Amiga chipset and having the basic
1850XL design with no chips to put into it, the Tramiels were forced to work
from scratch using some initial designs for a 32032
system that Shiraz
Shivja had done and they pieced together the STs. Heck, the
first batch
of ST's didn't even have ROM chips yet as the OS was still being finalized,
it wasn't until the Sept/85 batch that the ST's were shipping with internal
TOS. :-)
Curt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Duell" <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 3:01 PM
Subject: Re: PET and Magic Sac+
It goes in the
Atari's cartridge port, a little-used connector on the
side of the machine. Used an unusual type of edge connector, and
hardly any software was supplied on cartridges. Some sound samplers
used it, though. I think the signals available were read-only,
fine for ROMs, but preventing the use of the slot for most types
of peripherals.
Yes, IIRC, you had the data bus, some of the address bus and a couple of
chip select lines on that connector. Ideal for a ROM cartridge but not
for much else.
Worse than that, the Glue chip (IIRC) generated a bus error if you tried
to write to the cartridge memory area. So there was no point in picking
up the R/W line from somewhere else.
What some people did was use the address lines as outputs. They'd map a
latch to 256 contiguous memory locations and then use it to latch the
bottom 8 address lines (even on a read cycle). Then reading the
appropriate address from the cartridge port area would set the outputs of
the latch to the right states. A kludge, sure, but it was just about the
only way to do it.
-tony 
10:27 p.m.
New subject: Cosmac
"Mike" <dogas(a)bellsouth.net> said:
Cool! That looks like a CDS 1 or CDS II maybe. They
use the COSMAC
Microboard Universal Backplane and can nest a number of cool RCA cards
(CPU,
mem, i/o, disk, color video, etc..). Send some card
numbers. I've got
docs
on lot of them here.
Do any of your docs say
what "COSMAC" actually means? I was thinking along
the lines of "Chip On Sapphire MAChine" or something like that (the COSMAC
1802 was originally fabricated using a Silicon On Sapphire process that gave
it radiation resistance - IIRC NASA used 1802s on some deep-space probes).
Later.
--
Phil.
philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com
http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/
15 Jun
15 Jun
2:06 a.m.
New subject: Cosmac
Yes Sir!
Thats either an 1801 or 1802 development system chassis!
I think I have docs for that thing somewhere hidden along with my
Netronics ELF-II!
Wayne M. Smith wrote:
Anyone have any idea what this is or what it does?
http://home.earthlink.net/~wmsmith/_uimages/Cosmac.jpg
17 Jun
17 Jun
4:40 a.m.
--- Jeff Hellige <jhellige(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
I have both an A-Max and an A-Max-II for the Amiga...
The original A-Max is a long, thin cartridge that hangs off the floppy
poer of the Amiga and provides a pair of ROM sockets, pass-through for
the Amiga floppy, and a Mac floppy port.
Later, the A-Max-II came out for the A2000, etc., as a Zorro board
with a Z8530, twin Mac 8-pin mini-DINs, ROM sockets, and a couple of
34-pin floppy connectors. Instead of hanging an external Mac floppy
off a port in the back, you plug the internal Amiga floppy into the
A-Max-II board, and the A-Max-II board into the motherboard. I presume
it stuttered the motor or some such to get the rotation speeds to match;
that, or it synthesized its own bit clock (not sure if that would work
with Denise or not).
There was also an A-Max-IV, an A-Max-II board with a new PAL, more or
less, and different application software. I think it was released to
be able to run newer versions of the Mac OS than the A-Max-II could.
I used my A-Max cart/board for _years_ so I could a) transport files
to and from my mother's typesetting shop and b) directly drive my
HP LaserJet 4/ML (that I bought *new* for over $1000) from Mac apps.
Played a lot of Risk, also. :-)
Even when I had an A4000, the A3000 w/A-Max-II still got lots of use.
eventually, I started finding Macs for <$50 at the thrift stores and
I've moved on.
I did like Shapeshifter - a software-only Mac emulator for the Amiga. I
got a free license key for providing development assistance to the author.
It ran *concurrently* with AmigaDOS, and supported Ethernet. As a demo
at work (I had my A3000 on my desk when I was on the Ice), I showed my
Amiga booting System 7.something, then pull files off the Quadra 950
to its left, while at the same time, surfing the web with AMosaic. I
even showed it surfing with Netscape under MacOS, but I had to shut down
the TCP/IP stack on the AmigaDOS side because there was no way for the
stack to know which OS wanted to see IP packets. As long as I didn't
use the same packet type, I could have both OSes using the hardware
via the SANA-2 driver and it knew where to deliver the packets to. A
second ethernet card would have done the trick, too - one IP address
for the Mac, one for AmigaDOS.
I did not try running a DOS emulator under MacOS. :-)
-ethan
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
And Dave Small
did a version for the Amiga, too, I seem to
remember his exhibiting at an Amiga conference back when...
The main Mac emulation boards for the Amiga were the Amax and
the Emplant, though the Emplant didn't support the use of the
400k/800k Mac disks or floppy drive. It did have Mac serial and SCSI
ports though.
4:59 a.m.
New subject: Cosmac
--- Philip Pemberton <philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
Do any of your docs say what "COSMAC"
actually means? I was thinking
along the lines of "Chip On Sapphire MAChine" or something like that...
Never thought of the origins, but that's an astute guess. I just
figured it was a catchy name invented by marketing.
IIRC NASA used 1802s on some deep-space probes).
Voyager I and II, and Galileo (a recycled Voyager spare).
In addition to radiation resistance, the 1802 works down to 0 Hz - it
can be statically clocked - a buddy of mine built an Elf in high-school
and didn't own an oscilloscope - for debugging it, he used a debounced
switch and an analog VOM. He followed along the timing diagram in the
RCA docs and manually toggled it through the states (8 clocks per cycle,
2 or 3 cycles per instruction).
Unlike lots of modern processors, you can have an arbitrary amount
of time between clock ticks, providing for serious power savings
when a spacecraft is in cruise-along-and-ignore-things-for-weeks
mode. Just set an "alarm" to speed up the clock when an event comes
in, or every so often, then conserve for the rest of the trip (the
Voyager frame uses plutonium RTGs (radio-isotope thermal generators?)
for power, so it's not like you save on the batteries, but the principle
is the same - don't stress the equipment if you have nothing to do.
The 1802 is one of my 3 favorite microprocessors. As everyone else has
said, nice find.
-ethan
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
10:51 a.m.
I did like Shapeshifter - a software-only Mac emulator
for the Amiga. I
got a free license key for providing development assistance to the author.
It ran *concurrently* with AmigaDOS, and supported Ethernet. As a demo
at work (I had my A3000 on my desk when I was on the Ice), I showed my
Amiga booting System 7.something, then pull files off the Quadra 950
to its left, while at the same time, surfing the web with AMosaic. I
even showed it surfing with Netscape under MacOS, but I had to shut down
the TCP/IP stack on the AmigaDOS side because there was no way for the
stack to know which OS wanted to see IP packets. As long as I didn't
use the same packet type, I could have both OSes using the hardware
via the SANA-2 driver and it knew where to deliver the packets to. A
second ethernet card would have done the trick, too - one IP address
for the Mac, one for AmigaDOS.
I was one of the early registers of Shapeshifter and still
have it running on my A3000. Unfortunately I've never been able to
get it to work with my X-surf ethernet card. With the '060 and
Cybergraphx on the EGS Spectrum it really flies but I usually have it
running full screen. I've been told that if you use the
nullsana.device that you can use both the Amiga and Mac sides with
Miami at the same time. I've not tried it though.
I did not try running a DOS emulator under MacOS. :-)
Just on a lark I loaded SoftPC onto System 7.1 under
Shapeshifter. It was slow but it worked! It's fun to see just how
many layers of emulation you can pile on top of each other and still
have them actually functioning.
Jeff
--
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.cchaven.com
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
2:34 p.m.
New subject: Cosmac
I think the COSMAC was one of the first micro's to be
rad-hardened, and it was thoroughly proven out
logically - that is, all of the states were provable
mathematically. I don't think that there is enough
energy in the universe to power a Pentium IV long
enough to go through every single distinct logic
state.
Interestingly, that little mars rover that was so
successful and popular with the public - I think it
used a ceramic 80C85. Obsolete, but simple and proven.
--- Ethan Dicks <erd_6502(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Philip Pemberton <philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
Do any of your docs say what "COSMAC"
actually
means? I was thinking
along the lines of "Chip On Sapphire
MAChine" or
something like that...
Never thought of the origins, but that's an astute
guess. I just
figured it was a catchy name invented by marketing.
IIRC NASA used 1802s on some deep-space probes).
Voyager I and II, and Galileo (a recycled Voyager
spare).
In addition to radiation resistance, the 1802 works
down to 0 Hz - it
can be statically clocked - a buddy of mine built an
Elf in high-school
and didn't own an oscilloscope - for debugging it,
he used a debounced
switch and an analog VOM. He followed along the
timing diagram in the
RCA docs and manually toggled it through the states
(8 clocks per cycle,
2 or 3 cycles per instruction).
Unlike lots of modern processors, you can have an
arbitrary amount
of time between clock ticks, providing for serious
power savings
when a spacecraft is in
cruise-along-and-ignore-things-for-weeks
mode. Just set an "alarm" to speed up the clock
when an event comes
in, or every so often, then conserve for the rest of
the trip (the
Voyager frame uses plutonium RTGs (radio-isotope
thermal generators?)
for power, so it's not like you save on the
batteries, but the principle
is the same - don't stress the equipment if you have
nothing to do.
The 1802 is one of my 3 favorite microprocessors.
As everyone else has
said, nice find.
-ethan
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
6:32 p.m.
New subject: Pickup Help Needed in Georgia
Anyone within shooting distance of Macon, Georgia that can help me with
a pickup? Nothing heavy. I will pay reasonable compensation.
-W
8213
days inactive
8218
days old
22 comments
15 participants
participants (15)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
bob_lafleur＠technologist.com -
bshannon＠tiac.net -
coredump＠gifford.co.uk -
curt＠atari-history.com -
doc＠mdrconsult.com -
dogas＠bellsouth.net -
erd_6502＠yahoo.com -
foo＠siconic.com -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
jhellige＠earthlink.net -
lgwalker＠mts.net -
philpem＠dsl.pipex.com -
sloboyko＠yahoo.com -
wmsmith＠earthlink.net