Most used toys, was Re: The late, great TRS-80

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: Most used toys, was Re: The late, great TRS-80
>   From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
>   Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 03:09:30 -0400
>     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org>
>
>On Jun 26, 2007, at 8:01 PM, Chris M wrote:
>>>    The SBC is currently sitting on the table behind
>>> the 8/m, mostly
>>> due to laziness on my part.  The disk images reside
>>> on the SBC's
>>> system disk, which is a 1GB CF MicroDrive plugged
>>> into the SBC via a
>>> daughterboard.  The SBC is headless; I access it
>>> over the network.
>>
>>  You ought to document this arrangement.
>
>   I would be happy to.  Perhaps I'll take some pictures of it tomorrow.

If you do a simple block diagram and maybe descriptions of software on both
the host (pdp-8) and SBC would be helpful or better yet sources.


>> I get the jist of most of it, but yer SBC must have integral ethernet.
>
>   It does.
>
>> When I see SBC I think Ampro or something LOL.
>
>   It's very similar to an Ampro x86 SBC that I also have in my junk  
>box.  (if I could only turn it into a LittleBoard..)  The SBC is a  
>Teknor VIPer 830.
>

I suspect any SBC or PC that could run headless and has disk would work
given the right code and interface.  I've considered a small 8085 powered 
board with a IDE or CF drive to do that.

I have a BCC180 (z180 with 256k ram) and lots of parallel IO that would 
be a good candidate for that.

For PDP-8 ops, even 10mb is a "large"  disk I'm sure so even a 1mb ram
could work well as a "ramdisk".


Allison


>> And what sort of daughterboard (PC-104?).
>
>   Not PC/104...The Teknor board has a mezzanine slot (which I think  
>is proprietary) which takes a small daughterboard that's not much  
>bigger than a CF card.  You plug the CF card into the daughterboard,  
>then snap that assembly onto the SBC.  It's quite a nice arrangement.
>
>> I have
>> a few PMMX SBC's that I believe have ISA slot
>> capability (maybe even PCI), and even my Ampro Little
>> Board/PC has a header w/ISA signals.
>
>   Yes, this one is similar.  It can take PC/104 and PC/104+ boards,  
>and the SBC itself can plug into a passive 16-bit ISA backplane.  I  
>always found it odd that a board that has PC/104+ (which is PCI on a  
>different connector) capability would have an ISA card-edge connector  
>on it instead of PCI.
>
>> Some earlyish
>> SBC's have "flash" storgage capability, RE Robot/Vesta
>> OEM-188, but that's something different I take it
>> (like eeprom?).
>
>   Is it DiskOnChip(tm)?  Many SBCs can take those, both early and  
>modern.  I have a small pile of them somewhere.
>
>          -Dave
>
>-- 
>Dave McGuire
>Port Charlotte, FL
>