Intel MDS 225 (1st post)

From: Dwight Elvey <elvey_at_hal.com>
Date: Fri Oct 13 15:31:57 2000

"Bill Layer" <b.layer_at_vikingelectronics.com> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I subbed this list because I was given a rather large & heavy old machine
> which the owner refers to as an "Intel MDS225" and I am totally devoid of
> any official information about it. It consists of a large, white, main
> unit, which houses a CRT display, power supply and a bank of slots, several
> of which are occupied by plug-in cards.
>
> The unit also includes a separate keyboard, and a dual 8" floppy drive
> housed in a cabinet (which is blue in color), and fits underneath the main
> unit. Also supplied is a set of hardware that I believe is for in-circuit
> emulation of an i8048 microprocessor. As I understand it, this machine was
> used to develop firmware for several products which were controlled by 8048
> / 8749 micros. The owner also said that it runs (or ran, I have not put
> power to it) the ISIS operating system.
>
> So what have I got here, and to what potentially interesting use might I
> put it? Was it worth the agony of dragging it home and up the steps? :)

Hi
 This is one of the developement systems that Intel sold.
ISIS was the O/S that Intel uses for their machines. It
most likely has a 8080 or 8085 as the main processor ( I forget
when they changed things ). It sounds like you have what
was generically known as a series II type machine, although
there was usually one drive in the main cabinet next to the
CRT. The machine can be made into a CPM machine if you like
but the disk may not be compatable with other machines. These
most likely used M2FM soft sectored formats.
 I liked ISIS. It was a good OS. Scripting sequences of things
to do was relatively easy. It shows a lot of similarity
to CPM. These machines are not getting top dollar but they
are still a lot of fun to play with. They run multi-bus cards.
You can even get a 8086 card for them if you look around.
 I'm still looking to see if anyone has a copy of a program
called X1.11 or X1.12 for ISIS?
Dwight
Received on Fri Oct 13 2000 - 15:31:57 BST