Re: Remember "Bit-Slice" Chips ?

On Wed, 11 Dec 2024 22:26:29 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

Didn't the 5120s have like a REALLY dinky monitor ?

The 5100 and 5110 did. They were meant to be 'portable'. The 5120 bumped
it up to a magnificent 9".  It was bigger than the Osborne 1 monitor. Like
a laptop if I was at home I plugged it into an external monitor. I sent it
back to the factory for the 100 column upgrade and the massive storage of
double sided, double density floppies. It paid for itself many times over.
I even build a EPROM programmer using the parallel port. It had just
enough lines to put out the data and toggle the necessary lines.

   I've used an Osbourne and the competing Kaypro. For the era, they
   really weren't bad. The 8088 more smoothly accessed larger RAM space
   however, so it became the worthy successor. 64/128k became obsolete
   REAL quick.

You could already get more memory for a Z80 using bank switching. iirc the
bottom 2K was reserved to do the switch. The 8088 just formalized it on
the chip. The best part was the five different libraries for the tiny,
small, medium, large, and huge memory schemes or whatever they were
called.

   I've got a ZX81 around somewhere, but those were 'toys'.

I had a ZX80 that I bought in the kit form. I was already using the Z80
for embedded stuff and was curious what $100, iirc, would buy.
 

   Still, always wanted my own S-100 box, but could never afford one
   while they were still in use. I think they were still made even for
   the 68000, maybe 68020, but the buss wasn't meant for the higher
   clocks that soon became prevalent and it became so easy to put the
   periphs into ONE CHIP that there really wasn't the need for 8/10/12
   slot computers anymore.

I never had a S-100 but I designed a set of cards and a proprietary
backplane for a client with a real case of NIH. There were a bunch of them
in the industrial field including the STD Bus, which was anything but
standard. Everybody rolled their own.

The rumor was the S-100 came about when someone got a hell of a deal on
milsurp edge connectors.