10 Dec
2000
10 Dec
'00
3:34 p.m.
In a message dated 12/10/2000 8:49:23 PM Eastern Standard Time,
ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net writes:
ST225 is a good one, the 251 and 4096 were junk. The
ST251
was far to hot running to survive unless cooled with great effort.
Well, at least one survives:
Last week a frantic woman brought a Zenith Data Systems DOS-based PC into our
shop. It wouldn't boot and she was in desperate need of retrieving some
1-2-3 files from the drive -- an ST251. Turns out the system battery had
died, and once replaced we were able to get the system going and the drive
looked healthy (as healthy as a Seagate MFM drive ever looks).
Since it was in and out of the shop so quickly we didn't get much of a chance
to check out the system (Z200? S200?) but it looked as if the mainboard was
pretty much just a backplane, with the 10MHz AMD 286 CPU on an ISA card.
Anyone familiar with this beast? It looked pretty cool. Could cards with
faster CPUs be installed in place of the 286 card?
Glen Goodwin
0/0
10 Dec
10 Dec
3:35 p.m.
On Sun, 10 Dec 2000 Glenatacme(a)aol.com wrote:
Anyone familiar with this beast? It looked pretty
cool. Could cards with
faster CPUs be installed in place of the 286 card?
If it was truly a passive backplane system then sure. The bus is common
between the 286, 386 and 486, Pentium, etc. As long as all you plan to
use with the CPU are 16-bit cards.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
3:53 p.m.
Since it was in and out of the shop so quickly we
didn't get much of a chance
to check out the system (Z200? S200?) but it looked as if the mainboard was
pretty much just a backplane, with the 10MHz AMD 286 CPU on an ISA card.
Sounds like a Z-248, though I guess they could've had others
of that basic type that carried other model numbers which I don't
know about. Lage desktop case with 4 HH drive bays on the right
side. If I remember correctly, both the memory and CPU board were in
proprietary slots.
Anyone familiar with this beast? It looked pretty
cool. Could cards with
faster CPUs be installed in place of the 286 card?
There was a 386SX-16 board made for the machine that replaced
both the CPU board and proprietary Zenith memory card. The SX board
used 30pin SIMMs for the onboard RAM. I no longer remember who
manufactured the board though, but I have installed a few of them in
years past. The Z-248 was used widely by the US Navy and is often
found at surplus sales. As far as compatibility, it did pretty good.
Hope this helps.
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
11 Dec
11 Dec
5:57 a.m.
New subject: Zenith-PC was (World's Crappiest Drives)
In a message dated 12/10/2000 8:49:23 PM Eastern
Standard Time,
ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net writes:
I have a ZFA-161 which was an 8088 luggable. Passive backplane
and 2 cool pop-up floppies on top.I think the Z-100 models only
went up to m.150 altho you could put a Z80 card in the PCs. Don't
know how you would switch systems with both cards installed.
They had a nice built-in monitor system which was accessed by
control,alt,ins on startup.
The Nec V30 and V40 were common upgrades and I've heard
they would accept a hardcard. If it could be upgraded to a 286 or
higher with a processer complex that would be neat.
Reminds you of the IBM PS/2s with the processors on a card
(m.90-95's) that IBM calls planars as they did the earlier PS/2
mother-boards, altho the backplane is considerably more complex.
(non-passive backplane ?)
ciao larry
Reply to:
lgwalker(a)look.ca
ST225 is a good one, the 251 and 4096 were junk.
The ST251
was far to hot running to survive unless cooled with great effort.
Well, at least one survives:
Last week a frantic woman brought a Zenith Data Systems DOS-based PC
into our shop. It wouldn't boot and she was in desperate need of
retrieving some 1-2-3 files from the drive -- an ST251. Turns out the
system battery had died, and once replaced we were able to get the
system going and the drive looked healthy (as healthy as a Seagate MFM
drive ever looks).
Since it was in and out of the shop so quickly we didn't get much of a
chance to check out the system (Z200? S200?) but it looked as if the
mainboard was pretty much just a backplane, with the 10MHz AMD 286 CPU
on an ISA card.
Anyone familiar with this beast? It looked pretty cool. Could cards
with faster CPUs be installed in place of the 286 card?
Glen Goodwin
0/0
7:42 a.m.
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12 Dec
12 Dec
6:40 a.m.
Tony Duell skrev:
> Anyone familiar with this beast? It looked pretty
cool. Could cards with
> faster CPUs be installed in place of the 286 card?
Quite likely. It was certainly possible on some
Olivetti machines, which
were also built on a passive backplane.
On the topic of ISA processor cards, does anyone have any experience with the
Victor model n? M111021002?
It's a miniscule 386 tower system, measuring approximately 30?10?30 cm. It's
got one of the most difficult disassemblies I've seen on a PC, with a three-
part outer shells which must be removed before disks or cards are crammed into
it. ISA cards are dropped, or rather hung, into the backplane at the bottom of
the computer, literally hanging upside down. The machine was delivered with an
ISA card which on first inspection looks like a VGA card, but with another
card piggybacked onto it, covering an 80386 processor and 30-pin SIMM slots.
The backplane is in turn connected to another card with IDE and floppy
connectors, IIRC. This forms a "motherboard" spread out on three cards, a
design necessitated by the form factor of the case, which is no wider than a
3,5" drive bay. The standard configuration also seems to contain some sort of
docking bay for a tape drive or something. They seem to crop up at fleamarkets
quite often.
Would a drop-in CPU replacement be possible on such a system, and have there
been 486 ISA cards manufactured?
--
En ligne avec Thor 2.6.
Goto: A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers to
complain about unstructured programmers.
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
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