What's your coolest ISA card?( was Re: IBM 5150 PC) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

14 Aug 2001

...
  On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Gene Buckle wrote:
 > > > how about SILLIEST??  IBM professional debug facility.  An entire half
 > > > length card for the sole purpose of bringing two pins of the ISA bus
to a
...
    > pushbutton.  It made the front cover of PC Tech
Journal. 
 That sounds a LOT like the Periscope debugger board.  Is it?  
 NO!

 Periscope (by Brett Salter) had several different versions, ranging from
 little clips to go into an ISA slot alongside a board, to a full lenghth
 board with "write-protectable RAM" that the debugger could be loaded into.

Did anyone here ever get to use an ATRON debugger board?

This was a full-length card that, as best as I can determine from
my poor recollection, contained a discrete-IC implemnetation of the
8088 processor, which gave the debugger software the ability to get
to signals that would otherwise have required a "bond-out" version
of the 8088 (which I have no idea whether such beats existed or not).

The software let you step though a program cycle-by-cycle, so you 
could *really* watch as a low level.

It was essential in my work at the time, developing process
control software for warehouses and distribution centers, all
done the the Zenith Z-151 that now resides at home in the
collection.

Regards,
-dq