Newest member of the S-100 family

[NobodyIsHere]

Things are coming along with my restored homebuilt S-100 chassis. It is composed entirely of broken parts I have salvaged and repaired/restored. The S-100 Chassis itself is a homebrew unit with 16 slots (14 useable), an enormous linear power supply, and a custom built CompuPro Active Terminator clone circuit which I finally repaired today.

Currently the system is based on a 2 MHz Z80 (Ithaca Audio IA-1010B CPU board) with 56K of RAM (NorthStar RAM-32-A1 32K DRAM, 2 CompuPro EconoRam II 8K SRAM boards, an SD Sales 4K SRAM board, and a Godbout 4K SRAM board). Every board had to be repaired in order to function.

It communicates with the terminal PC via a Cromemco Interfacer II serial/parallel board and a NorthStar MDS-A single density floppy controllers. The serial port is attached to a dedicated PC/XT whose job is to act as the terminal. Two SA-400 floppy disk drives are attached in an homebrew external enclosure connected to the NorthStar floppy controller.

For debugging, the CPU board has the Dave Dunfield RAMless monitor burned into 2708 EPROM. A Bob Mullen TB-1 bus extender with restored logic probe and a Jade Bus Probe for bus monitoring. Also should mention the VOM, oscilloscope, and a hand held logic probe have all been very useful.

The system boots into NorthStar DOS 5.1 (single density) with the homebuilt floppy drive enclosure.

Here are some pictures of the new system:

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3844.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3845.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3846.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3847.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3848.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3849.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3850.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3851.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3852.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3853.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/lynchaj/img_3858.jpg

Thanks to everyone who helped along the way to restoring this system.

Andrew Lynch

 

[chuckcmagee]

Oh thank god, the fan works! Very important to keep that air moving in a 3 inch circle around that fan (hehe).


I'm still trying to get mine to boot. I haven't made any strong efforts recently. I will try a bunch of stuff, get pissed off, and leave it alone for a few days. I did finally get a NOS Northstar motherboard. Looks sooo pretty I hate to use it. Anyway, soon as I get that swapped in, I am betting and hoping that something positive will happen.

And yes, the pretty Blueberry iMac 350Mhz does get as HOT as everyone says. Warming my hands now. Of course, I think it's still 80 degrees outside at 3:30 am.