[HN Gopher] S100 Computers
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S100 Computers
Author : bilegeek
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-02-02 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (s100computers.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (s100computers.com)
| vile_wretch wrote:
| A Sol-20 with monitor sold at an estate auction near me for so
| cheap not too long ago. I had no idea what it was and had my eye
| on the Apple IIc instead. I did end up winning a box of S100 bus
| cards and Sol-20 tapes though, including a "Micro Soft" extended
| basic cassette. The lot I won also came with an S100 bus "music
| synthesizer board" which is pretty awesome. I ended up selling
| most of it off to fund my stupid Vintage Apple collection though.
| CarVac wrote:
| My dad has an IMSAI 8080. It's a gorgeous piece of hardware, with
| the multicolored switches on that dark plastic panel.
|
| He showed me how to write basic programs on it once in assembly,
| but never much more than that.
| jefurii wrote:
| I wish there was a modern version of the S-100 bus. I don't have
| a use case but I've always thought that form-factor was really
| cool.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In industrial applications there are still plenty of systems
| built on good old ISA and PCI buses with the host on one card
| and a whole pile of IO of all kinds of plumage on others.
| Wistar wrote:
| Not super S100 focused but, in the early 80s, I used an Alpha
| Microsystems S100 multi-user system with a WD16 processor. Later,
| the company I worked for, a video production company, upgraded to
| the 68000 based Alpha Micro. The whole company ran on that thing,
| accounting, writing and I even wrote a small program allowing it
| to control a Chyron Scribe video character generator in the edit
| suite.
|
| I remember liking the system very much but admit that I didn't
| have much with which to compare it. I thought their OS, AMOS and
| AMOS/L, was great.
|
| Someone I know who knew Bill Gates fairly well at that time told
| me that Alpha Microsystems was a company that truly scared Gates.
|
| In 1986, I met Dick Wilcox, one of the Alpha Microsystem founders
| as he was buying a Pitts S2B at the Auburn, WA airport.
| mulmen wrote:
| I love this stuff. My current side/evening project is the Ben
| Eater 8-bit breadboard CPU. My long term vision is to transfer it
| to S-100 boards.
| amock wrote:
| If you're interested in things like this then
| https://odysee.com/@JamesSharman:b (or
| https://www.youtube.com/user/weirdboyjim) is another channel
| you might find interesting.
| mulmen wrote:
| Thanks I will check those out!
|
| I have seen the pipelined CPU video, very cool! Part of why I
| want to build on a S-100 platform is so I can make
| architectural changes like that.
|
| The possibilities are endless.
| garyrob wrote:
| I had a Gifford S100 system running Concurrent CP/M and with
| telephone-voice interface boards that ran a voice-based dating
| site I designed and programmed in Pascal. The CPU was a 286
| running at 8mhz. It was in NYC, with phone number 212-ROMANCE.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| My first machine as a mad 14 year old was an S-100 system I build
| from bare board kits and programmed (initially) from a front
| panel I designed. My dad eventually took pity on me and got me a
| serial terminal.
|
| I had a Z80 CPU that could handle a blazing 2 MHz IIRC but I
| remember I could never run at that speed, though I could do more
| than 1 MHz if I disconnected my front panel.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| IMO S100 is under-represented in the history of microcomputers.
| That history is usually represented as Apple, Tandy, Commodore
| and Atari vs IBM PC & clones. But in my opinion, the IBM PC &
| clone / MS-DOS ecosystem is a fairly direct successor of the
| S100+CP/M ecosystem.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Well ...
|
| The "motherboard" of most S100 systems AFAIK were simply a a
| power supply and bunch of slots. Nothing onboard, your RAM fit
| in a slot, your CPU card fit in a slot, your video card or
| serial port for your terminal fit in a slot, your disk
| controller fit in a slot, etc.
|
| The original IBM 5150 had RAM and CPU onboard, as well as a
| tape I/O port.
|
| I did run into an old Zenith PC clone at a Goodwill a while
| back. I think dated from 1987.
|
| Really weird system - the motherboard was an S100-style
| backplane that only had the Motorola MCxxx-whatever clock chip
| (a real one and even socketed). On a big ISA-style card was a
| 286 with a lot of other chips, another big ISA-style card that
| looked like RAM, and a third that had all the discrete
| components of your PC chipset - the PIT, the two UART chips,
| the two DMA controllers. I forget if the PICs were there or on
| the CPU board.
|
| The BIOS was also weird ... had a built in monitor complete
| with assembler and disassembler commands.
|
| Every single chip was socketed. It was ... bizarre. Had an MFM
| drive running DOS 2-point-something and an ISA VGA card in one
| of the slots. Still worked.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's called a backplane.
| rootbear wrote:
| My first job out of college was at Scion Corporation, who made
| the MicroAngelo S-100 graphics boards. I did Z80 programming for
| the firmware. They were nice boards but very expensive so I never
| got one for myself. The company nearly died when their follow on
| board for the IBM-PC was a failure, but that's a longer story.
| jeffbarr wrote:
| Was that in / near the University of Maryland in the late
| 1970's? I was working at a computer store in Rockville as a
| teenager. Chuck Rieger came in and showed me and the other
| employees the MicroAngelo. It seemed to be very expensive and
| very complex, if memory serves me right.
| rootbear wrote:
| Scion was in Reston, Virginia, but Chuck was a professor at
| the University of Maryland as well. He eventually quit UMD to
| work at Scion full time. He's the reason I got the job, he
| was one of my UMD profs. The MicroAngelo was easy to program
| but expensive because it was basically a full computer. It
| had an onboard Z80 and 32K (later 64K) of RAM. I worked there
| from 1981 to 1983-ish, when they fell on hard times and had
| to lay a bunch of people off.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I'm immensely interested in the history of computing and
| computers. If it was ever the case you'd consider being
| interviewed about your experience (either on this topic, or
| others-- your HN comment history makes me think you've got
| a lot of interesting experience) please reach out. I don't
| know that I'd necessarily want to do the interviewing (it's
| nothing I've practiced), but I'd definitely try to help
| facilitate it. These stories are too valuable and
| interesting not to be told.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There's a name I haven't heard in a couple of decades. Those
| neurons shed some rust when they activated :)
| rootbear wrote:
| I know the feeling!
| mikewarot wrote:
| My late friend, Lloyd Smith used offer a service where he split
| the DC power bus and added a second power supply to S-100
| systems, because the stock power supplies were undersized for a
| full card cage.
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