Unknown S100 system

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Unknown S100 system
>   From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
>   Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:22:08 +0100
>     To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>
>Kind of posting on a whim that this might be something obvious...
>
>All of the S100 systems I've seen to date have comprised a backplane and then 
>cards for various system components - including CPU and memory. However, I 
>unearthed one today which held much of the system logic on the backplane 
>itself (i.e. more like a modern-day PC motherboard - I'd heard such things 
>existed, but this is the first one I've actually seen).

I have at last one that qualifies.  Netronics Explorer 8085.  The base 
board mas a8085 cpu, space for 8K Eprom and 4k ram plus the 256bytes ram 
for the monitor and the 2K (8755) Eprom monitor.  What makes it different 
is you could add the bus interface and two sockets for 2 S100 sockets and 
there was an exptension backplane that stacked on it for another 5 S100 
slots. 

>Unfortunately I forgot to bring the thing home with me, so I'm a bit light on 
>remembered details (but can get more tomorrow if needs be). However, it 
>appeared to have both an 8088 and 8085 CPU on board, memory, what is probably 
>ROM, a handful of S100-bus [1] connectors, parallel port, a light-pen port 
>(unusual!), plus a few other ports (at least one was serial I expect). There 
>were a few other IDC-style pin headers too - perhaps for some sort of storage, 
>but none of them were obviously labeled as to function.
>
>Sound familiar to anyone?

No, very few systems I've seen carry both 8085 and 8088 and those were 
mostly Compupro S100.

>
Allison