[rescue] VAX CPU Board on ebay

[Jeffrey J.Nonken]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003 14:41:24 -0500, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
wrote:

> On Thursday, January 30, 2003, at 12:44 PM, Jeffrey J.Nonken wrote:
> > Yeah, I have that same computer, except mine says "IMSAI" on the
> > front. :)
>
>    You have an IMSAI 8080?  Cool!  Does yours have a lid?  Mine is
> missing the lid, has been since I got it ~18 years ago.  It had been
> languishing in a friend's basement for the past 10 years or so but I
> picked it up on my last trip up north this past fall.  It was like
> seeing an old friend again.  Hell, it WAS seeing an old friend again!
>
>    Mine has a CCS Z80 CPU board (4MHz with an IMSAI-compatible
> front-panel port), 64K of *static* RAM (yeah static, I'm the man!), a
> Digitalker speech synth, four serial ports and a hand-built (trivially
> simple) parallel printer port.
>
>           -Dave

Mine's got the lid, but lots of the switch handles are missing... I'm afraid
I've been careless about keeping it, and many of them have been knocked off.
They're probably all around somewhere, but the switches haven't been useful
(except maybe the reset) for a while, so it hasn't been a priority.

I don't know what boards I have for it... it came with an 8080 board, and
somebody gave me a Z80 board that I never got working. The last few times I
used it I was using a set of Compupro 8086-based stuff (which don't seem to
respond to the switches) with a V30 processor. I've got Kermit running on it,
and several Infocom games (including Zork). I have a copy of CP/M-86 Basic
that apparently wasn't supposed to get out, but a friend of mine was in the
habit of checking distribution discs for weird shit -- and found this erased
but recoverable copy of Basic-86 one day.

I of course have CP/M-86 running on the Compupro stuff.

I've got all kinds of miscellaneous stuff for the thing, including two
dynamic
RAM boards that I don't think will work with the Compupro boards.

I forget how much RAM it currently has, but it's a bunch -- for the time.
Static, of course, a whole board. OTOH, at this point I could fill up the
whole machine, RAM-wise, including all the banks the Compupro supports (or
was
bank switching built right into the S-100 bus? Now I forget), with a handful
of chips that I currently have squirrelled away in tubes, and still have room
left on the board for a RTC or some I/O.

I also have a SASI adaptor, IIRC. Unfortunately the drive -- an old Memorex
8"
10 meg behemoth, which I'd gotten working on a different system (at work) --
is long gone, either scavanged by somebody who didn't know they needed the
card, or tossed as useless by somebody who didn't know the card went with it.

I also have a bunch of cards salvaged from THAT box as well, including RAM
and
peripherals, and probably CPU and everything. I didn't keep the box, it
wasn't
worth it to me to have another enormous, heavy box around.

I have this incredible kludge RTC board. Manufactured, but a kludge...
somebody designed the thing around an early digital alarm clock chip.
Fortunately the output goes to the LED decoder/drivers, doesn't drive the
segments directly, so you only have to interpret the BCD. But setting it
means
holding certain inputs active and then watching the outputs change until it
reaches the time you want. :)

You want any of this stuff? I don't think I'm willing to part with the IMSAI
box or its contents, but this other stuff is just taking up room. I might
want
to keep a few pieces, but probably not much. Shall I sort through and
inventory? My wife will be DELIGHTED to help if there's the LEAST chance of
watching it go out the door. :)

I'm envious of your Digitalker... I actually had a demo set of chips, but
never did anything with it.

Hmm. There's S-100 stuff for sale on eBay...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2304506064&category=1247

Yeah! That's the original CPU board I've got:
http://www.msdsite.com/ebay/s100/cpu.jpg
(Not the Godbout. I mean CompuPro. I mean Viasyn. I mean... :)



---
ENEMY: Anyone who tells the truth about you.