Speaking of the rebirth of IMSAI . . .
Has anyone seen anything new on their web page? I've been following a few
of the items and have seen no changes since the 20th or so.
I'm not sure of the market for a hot pentium system packaged behind an Imsai
trademark and front panel. I'd much rather see them pick up the support
thread for the already existing Imsai-branded hardware and publish the
existing doc's on their web site. I'm sure there is a market for between 50
and 500 of each of several boards, and, if he already has the rights and the
artwork, reproducing the originals. If he ( Todd Fischer ) made them,
perhaps to order, and perhaps with a dry-film solder mask and high-quality
bright-white silk screened legends, with some jumper definitions as are on
many no-longer-current PC ISA add-ons, to distinguish between the old boards
and the new as well as to minimize the support requirements, I don't think
he'd lose his shirt.
I've been after the original spec's for the IMSAI pre-1977 bus timing, etc,
in case anyone has that data in shareable form.
I've found the schematic for my IMSAI PIO-6 board but only half the manual,
fortunately with the schematic, of the PIO-4. I don't seem to have any bus
timing informtion, though.
Any help with this would be appreciated.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Sunday, March 28, 1999 2:25 PM
Subject: Re: Rebirth of IMSAI
>> As the purchaser of mostly Thrift-Store Classics (i.e. incomplete, dirty,
>> sometimes broken machines for $10 and less) I really don't know what was
>> being displayed in the showroom. I remember the cool 3D wireframe stuff
>> on the Northstar Advantage, the Juggler and Boing! demos on the Amiga,
the
>> aforementioned Christmas Demo, and that's about it.
>
>
>There was a (tape) program for the TRS-80 model 1 called (IIRC) Micro
>Marquee. It let you type in a message and it would display it on large
>characters built from the graphics blocks (something like about 12
>characters/line, 3 lines/screen), scrolling up the screen.
>
>There was a default built-in message which seemed to be advertising for
>the machine. Something like 'Hello, I'm the new TRS-80 computer that
>you've heard so much about...' I've always assumed that was a shop demo
>program.
>
>There was a demo program for the PERQ. It showed some very fast graphics
>(windows moving over the screen, lines being drawn, etc). AFAIK, they
>_were_ being created in real-time - it wasn't just a set of full-screen
>bitmaps. Don't think you could call it a 'store demo', though.
>
>-tony
>
Received on Sun Mar 28 1999 - 19:57:04 BST