PC Adapter Tech Ref

From: Cini, Richard <RCini_at_congressfinancial.com>
Date: Wed Jun 13 13:53:02 2001

Tony:

        Actually, Sam Ismail has a complete 3-binder set that he's going to
loan to me for copying.

        I remember looking to purchase the AT TechRef many years ago and I
think that it was around $250.

Rich

==========================
Richard A. Cini, Jr.
Congress Financial Corporation
1133 Avenue of the Americas
30th Floor
New York, NY 10036
(212) 545-4402
(212) 840-6259 (facsimile)


-----Original Message-----
From: ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk [mailto:ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 2:25 PM
To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: PC Adapter Tech Ref


>
> Hello, all:
>
> I was reading an older book on MSDOS and it referred to the "IBM PC
> Options and Adapters Technical Reference" which supposedly had detailed
info
> and schematics for all of IBM's adapter cards for the PC. It sounds like
an
> interesting addition to my PC technical reference materials.
>
> Does anyone have a copy of this that I can copy? Joe Rigdon?

I have it, but it's not going to be available for loan. I use it too much.

At one point the option cards were covered in the TechRefs for the
machines themselves. Then, when it was realised that several manuals
contained the same information (after all, many of the options went on
serveral machines), the machine TechRefs covered the keyboard,
motherboard and PSU only, and the options were covered by the O&A techrefs.

Originally it was 2 volums, always sold together by IBM. These cover all
the options and adapters that go in the PC and XT machines. Volume 1
covers the expansion cablinet, monitors and printers, volume 2 covers the
expansion cards, cables, etc. I think that's right anyway. You get
schematics, programming info and often the BIOS source code if applicable
(there's the source code for the XT hard disk bios, for example).

There are then a lot of suplements. There is one for AT option cards
(hard/floppy disk controller, serial/parallel adapter, etc). There's one
for the EGA card (this does contain schematics and BIOS sources).
There's another complete volume for the 'scientific' options (Data
aquisition/control adapter, GPIB card, Professional Graphics Controller
(no ROM listings for that :-(). There are also individual suplements for
later options, like the 3.5" drives, later hard disks, etc.

MAny of the later suplements don't contain schematics or ROM source,
though. The older ones do.

I have the 2 volume set, the AT supplement, the Scientific O&A volume,
the EGA suplement and probably other odd bits.

It may still be available from IBM. Last I heard (this was a few years
ago), it was out of print but they still had some in stock. It's not
cheap, though.

-tony
Received on Wed Jun 13 2001 - 13:53:02 BST