What's in a No Name Computer?

From: Henry Broekhuyse <broekh_at_interchange.ubc.ca>
Date: Thu May 24 01:39:23 2001

Edwin P. Groot wrote:
> Anyone know about the No Name Computers (NNC) company?
> I picked up a 20-slot S-100 mainframe model NNC 100 the other day and
> I'm not too sure what to make of it since my only S-100 experience is a
> Heath/Zenith Z-100. Did NNC market computer systems, or just the box of
> slots?
> The box has some boards, which were not seated in the slots. From
> lowest to highest slot number they are:
> CompuPro INTERFACER 4
> CompuPro CPU 8085/88
> CompuPro SYSTEM SUPPORT 1
> CompuPro RAM20
> CompuPro RAM20
> CompuPro DISK 1 with 'BOOT CD/M.B' ROM
>
> I assume this machine has enough intelligence to boot a floppy, so a
> bootstrap doesn't have to be keyed in. Do you think it has enough
> intelligence to differentiate SS/DS and SD/DD drives? I also picked up
> some 8" floppies, but none of them say No Name Computers! The various
> labels are: Big Board CP/M, WordStar, SuperCalc, Typing Tutor, Easy Flow,
> SpellGuard, Vedit, SpellStar, ARC, dBaseII, DataStar, Rainbow BASIC,
> Rainbow Pascal, Cromemco CDOS, X-8, Turbo Pascal, SIG-M BigBoard, and Mix
> C. Do any of these seem likely candidates to boot this computer?
> Any help would be much appreciated!

What you have is a basic set of boards required to boot and run either
CompuPro CP/M-80 or CP/M-8/16. None of the disks you have is appropriately
labelled, so almost certainly you do not have a "System Master" disk. It
remains to be seen whether any of your disks will boot this system, despite
the labelling. The disks "Big Board CP/M" and "Cromemco CDOS" are for other
systems and are not potential candidates.

The CompuPro DISK 1 floppy controller (in its default configuration) was
designed for use with a DSDD 8" drive. CompuPro's version of CP/M would read
standard SD CP/M floppy disks, and had several of its own DD formats.

For a reasonable chance at getting this system up and running, you need at
minimum a copy of the DISK1 manual and a CompuPro CP/M boot floppy. The
DISK1 manual tells you how the other boards need to be configured, and also
tells you which 8" drives it "preferred" and how the multitude of jumpers on
these drives need to be set to make them work properly with this controller.

Henry Broekhuyse
Received on Thu May 24 2001 - 01:39:23 BST