DOS for S-100?

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Tue Aug 7 00:25:08 2001

In the early '80's it was quite routine to see MS-DOS or PC-DOS running on an
S-100 or other 80x86 box. Given enough information about the DOS/PC
interaction, it was quite straightforward setting up and running PC-DOS, given
that one had a MONO-compatible or CGA-compatible display adapter and monitor and
a keyboard handler that fit. There were even PC-emulators sold for the S-100,
that had off-board memory, but on-board keyboard and video interface, along with
the other PC essentials. They were seldom 100% compatible, however.

If you're not fussy about all the "compatibility" problems, it's not difficult,
once you have an 8086-family processor running.

If you wanted to do that today, I'd recommend building an S-100<=>ISA adapter,
and putting a "short" mono card and a PC keyboard adapter on a board, together
with an ISA FDC/HDC board. That should be easy enough to manage. Somebody may
even have one on the market.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marvin" <marvin_at_rain.org>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 10:07 PM
Subject: DOS for S-100?


>
> Has anyone heard of DOS being available for the S-100 platform? A friend of
> mine is trying to gain access to an optical drive that was used on an S-100
> system and says that DOS 3.1 was the system. I have not heard of DOS being
> used on S-100 systems, hence the question.
>
>
Received on Tue Aug 07 2001 - 00:25:08 BST