Introduction and Alpha Micro AM-1200 query

[Ross Sponholtz]

Hi Everyone,
I just subscribed on the cctalk mailing list, I thought I’d introduce myself.  The first computer that I ever used was an Alpha Micro AM-100 at my high school, where I had the extra project of figuring out Pascal and explaining it to the teacher.  I’m pretty excited about Eric and Al’s decapping project – I’m imagining a FPGA-based AM-100 emulator in the future!

In fact, I recently picked up an Alpha Micro AM-1200 that I’d like to get running. It’s giving a selftest error indicating a memory problem that hopefully I can figure out how to track down.  After that, I’ll need to get an OS on an appropriate disk (I don’t think the disk is working).  Does anyone here have any info or documentation on these machines, or maybe even some software? The info out on the ‘net on these things seems pretty minimal. 

Back to the intro: I went to University of Colorado Boulder for Computer Science back in the mid-80s, graduating in 88 after doing a lot of work under VMS and various Unix machines.  I now work for Microsoft (in cloud pre-sales tech), and have a small collection of old computers – AM-1200, Microvax, Mac SE and HP 9000/300.  I recently picked up a nice ADM-3a that I got working by replacing some RAM chips.  

Anyway, thanks for your help, and love the conversation!

Ross Sponholtz
rsponholtz at hotmail.com