What's your coolest ISA card?( was Re: IBM 5150 PC)

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Tue Aug 14 07:32:24 2001

> On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Gene Buckle wrote:
> > > > 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.
> > That sounds a LOT like the Periscope debugger board. Is it?
>
> NO!
>
> Periscope (by Brett Salter) had several different versions, ranging from
> little clips to go into an ISA slot alongside a board, to a full lenghth
> board with "write-protectable RAM" that the debugger could be loaded into.

Did anyone here ever get to use an ATRON debugger board?

This was a full-length card that, as best as I can determine from
my poor recollection, contained a discrete-IC implemnetation of the
8088 processor, which gave the debugger software the ability to get
to signals that would otherwise have required a "bond-out" version
of the 8088 (which I have no idea whether such beats existed or not).

The software let you step though a program cycle-by-cycle, so you
could *really* watch as a low level.

It was essential in my work at the time, developing process
control software for warehouses and distribution centers, all
done the the Zenith Z-151 that now resides at home in the
collection.

Regards,
-dq
Received on Tue Aug 14 2001 - 07:32:24 BST