8-bitters and multi-whatever

[Chuck Guzis]

On 10 Sep 2007 at 16:24, Roy J. Tellason wrote:


> I remember seeing that in some sales literature and it always did strike me as 
> being more spendy than I wanted or could afford to get into.  :-)

For the purist, Multibus has a lot more going for it than any of the 
"hobbyist" buses.  If you look at the signal layout, it appears that 
some thought actually went into the design.  AFAIK, Multibus cards in 
some incarnation are still being produced or at least sold.

And the MDS-800 was built like a battleship.

re:  CP/M Networking:

> What does that take on the software side of things?

A CP/M add-on called CP/NET.  The downside is that it takes valuable 
memory.

PC's had a number of "cheap" networking setups.  I've got one here 
called "The $25 Network", basically run through serial (maybe 
parallel) ports.  There were others, some with low-cost cards, such 
as "The Invisible Network".  I wonder if a ring could be set up using 
the old DOS Interlink.

MS-DOS has had some flavor of networking "hooks" for a very long 
time.  CD-ROM access is implemented as a networked device.  I've 
implemented a number of foreign filesystem drivers using networking 
where file naming conventions or oddball block sizes weren't amenable 
to normal DOS filesystem conventions.

Cheers,
Chuck