Thankyou for the link. There is some gold in there about memory cards and interface serial ports.
I couldnt resist this imsai 16k memory card on ebay, it also needs some chips and some care …. You can probably guess where this is going …. Cpu, memory, backplane… did the 8080 machines use serial or parallel to communicate with a terminal?
I think the switches and lights frontpannel might be an imposibility to find, but it should be possible to put in an eprom and get it to boot that way.
I would not have recommended you buy that IMSAI 16K RAM board - that board is a "project" mostly of interest to someone trying to restore an original IMSAI rather than something you can get up and running right away. This board has already been cannibalized for some of its ICs - not a good sign. The cheap TI edge-wipe IC sockets are a problem. There is a CompuPro RAM17 64K S100 RAM board currently on eBay that would have been a far better choice.
Before buying more boards, I suggest you first thoroughly consider what the end result of this project is going to be. An S100 system with 16K of RAM, a serial interface board, and a small software monitor program running from a ROM is going to cost you several hundred dollars to get running - and you will not be able to do much with it. To get a minimal S100 system up and running based on what you already have, you will also need:
- a board you can plug an EPROM into with monitor ROM software. Unless you have a front panel or a board that provides a power-on jump circuit, the monitor ROM you choose will need to have a starting address at 0000h (the reset address of the 8080)
- a serial interface board that the ROM monitor software has been designed to work with. You can use any PC running serial terminal emulator software as your S100 system's console.
- of course, a power supply for your backplane. Highly recommended you use three inexpensive switching power supplies, one to supply +8V and two to supply the positive and negative 16V.
A "switches and lights" front panel is not impossible to find however you either (a) need to build one, and there are several DIY designs available to choose from or (b) you need to buy an original IMSAI - expensive, but virtually always available for sale on eBay.
Consider joining the Google Groups S100 discussion group - more S100 help available there than anywhere else. Also, look at this web site for a lot of information on S100 systems, and projects for those who want to build a new S100 system rather than using old parts salvaged from vintage systems:
S100 Computers Home Page
www.s100computers.com