Hi Tony, Dwight,
>There'll be a CPU (probably an 8080 or 8085, knowing Intel :-)) on one of
>those plug-in cards, and memory on at least one other. One or two more
>will be the disk controller for the 8" drives (I have the MDS800, and the
>disk controller for that is not exactly simple...).
Yes, that pretty much sums it up - I knew that one board was the disk
controller (I think it is marked as such) and I'm pretty sure that one
other board has the 8085 CPU on it as you describe.
>ISIS = Intel Systems Integrated Supervisor (or something like that) and
>is the OS that virtually all the MDS's ran...
Interesting, that is the first explanation of the ISIS acronym I have heard
so far.
>An in-circuit emulator is a fun toy if you're interested in building
>microcontroller boards yourself.
Not too much explanation required on that topic - I do a bit of firmware
development here at work, with the Microchip PIC series of
microcontrollers. Fortunately, the PIC ICE is nothing nearly as large, slow
or heavy as the MDS system in question. The MDS was used to develop many of
our products up until we went to PICs a number of years ago (and well
before I joined the company). The MDS was given me by an engineer here, and
came with a pile of disks and no documentation.
I was hoping that I could get some useful OS running, CPM would be great; I
have several CPM machines already, so it's not totally foreign to me. Would
I need a different CPU card, or other hardware to run CP/M? For that
matter, who ported the CPM to this architecture? I assume that the MDS
architecture is totally weird & proprietary...
Dwight, I will look through my set of disks for the program that you
request, I have no idea what is in there, other than the softs to run the
ICE function. Thanks to both of you for your help, much appreciated.
Bill Layer
Sales Technician
<b.layer_at_vikingelectronics.com>
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Viking Electronics, Inc.
1531 Industrial St.
Hudson, WI. 54016 - U.S.A
715.386.8861 ext. 210
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Received on Fri Oct 13 2000 - 16:20:37 BST