Yes, that's probably a chassis for a 9900 system. I once marveled at the
similarity to S-100 when it was shown to me in a TI sales office when I was
considering using TI's 9940 single-chip microcontroller in a product.
I've never seen one of these boxes that wasn't for sale, and the last time
was ~20 years ago. They're quite an oddity. I wouldn't hold my breath
until I see cards for one, though. This card set was not the same as the
990 card set.
You can tell these cards, even with the connectors cut off, from S-100 by
virtue of the S-100's on-board voltage regulators, so I wouldn't let that
worry me.
As little as I do remember about the system, it was quite unremarkable, not
"better" than S-100 because of the lack of software, and not more attractive
than it was because TI was the only vendor of boards, hence tye owned the
market for both software and hardware. I'm not even sure it was appreciably
faster than the typically 8-bit processors found on the S-100. It did claim
to be a 16-bit architecture.
They did claim to have SOME software, though I don't remember much about it.
Unfortunately, I recall having tossed out what documents I had about five
years ago.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Sellam Ismail <dastar_at_ncal.verio.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Sunday, March 28, 1999 9:01 AM
Subject: Re: Just another Rinky-Dink Florida hamfest
>On Sun, 28 Mar 1999, Joe wrote:
>
>> Whatta you mean I didn't pick it up? It's sitting in the middle of
the
>> kitchen floor :-/ Turns out that it's not exactly S-100. The sockets are
>> right but they're off set to one side of the card slot so S-100 cards
won't
>> fit in. Someone else said it was for some kind of TI computer. Too bad.
>> It's a super nice box. I'm thinking of trying to modify it to fit S-100.
>
>Might this be a chassis for a TI9900 system, Allison?
>
>If so, I'd leave it in tact as bait for the cards that go with it.
>Otherwise, if you modify it you'll attract S-100 cards with the edge
>connectors cut off. :(
>
>Sellam Alternate e-mail:
dastar_at_siconic.com
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie to come out.
>
> Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
> See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
> [Last web site update: 02/15/99]
>
Received on Sun Mar 28 1999 - 10:40:41 BST