"Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" wrote:
> Coolest? or weirdest?
Coolest, weirdest, silly, interesting...take your pick.
All work!
>
> how about SILLIEST?? IBM professional debug facility. An entire half
> length card for the sole purpose of bringing two pins of the ISA bus to a
> pushbutton. It made the front cover of PC Tech Journal.
>
> Eiconscript. Laser printer controller (for CX mechanism) with postscript
> wannabe and laserjet emulation
> Cordata. Laser printer controller with proprietary formatting language
> and fonts. Software refuses to run on 286 and above.
> Jlaser. Laser printer controller. various models with "add-ons",
> including Canon IX12? scanner controller, serial, parallel, floppy
> controllers. Originally made for the sole purpose to be able to peddle
> large amounts of RAM.
>
> Co-processor "speedup" cards
> 8086
> 80186
> 80286
> 80386
> ...
>
> Quadlink. Apple 2 on a card, without the reliability of the Trackstar
> (70% DOA rate, and even the replacement boards were untested)
>
> Apple Turnover. fits between floppy controller and drive for reading
> Apple disks on PC. POS from POS company.
>
> Coolest?
> extender card from Hurricane labs with lots of switches and LEDs to be
> able to intercept and monitor some of the bus signals.
>
> P.O.S.T cards. very useful when programming to be able to out to a port
> to display what's going on in a program with minimal disruption
>
Yes, I have a POST card that I still use, or did about 3 months ago.
>
> Are you going to be at VCF?
> I have to offload several more cubic yards of stuff, including ISA cards.
>
Oh, no ya don't! I have several cubic yards myself. Worked in a computer
store awhile back during the ISA to PCI switchover and pick up their
decde long leftovers of ISA.
I know how it goes. "You can have this group, but you must take it all!"
No cherrypicking!"
Sound familar?
I want to cherrypick....
Eric
>
> --
> Fred Cisin cisin_at_xenosoft.com
> XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
> PO Box 1236 (510) 558-9366
> Berkeley, CA 94701-1236
Received on Tue Aug 07 2001 - 15:08:16 BST