"Toy" computers (was Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers)

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Sat Apr 27 02:21:09 2002

I did that sort of thing in a development system I worked up for my own use
back in the early '80's. The various processors in the system told the
resident Z80 which was, all the while, running CP/M what to do in the form of
command line entry, and it would load memory, which had been configured by the
requesting CPU, and the CPU then grabbed it.

That was MUCH easier than writing a file system for each of the CPU's. The
stuff all lived in the same box, though.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 8:59 PM
Subject: Re: "Toy" computers (was Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers)


> On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> > Gee ... I've never seen one of those ... and I've picked up countless
Apple
> > "drives" over the years, hoping to find something useable inside. The
best
> > I've ever gotten has been a box + PSU. If I'd ever run into an Ampro
product,
> > I'd have remembered.
>
> And you WON'T find 'em in regular drives.
> This would be specifically the drives that were intended to add MFM
> capabilities to non-MFM systems, and therefore needed to have at least an
> FDC, and even a microprocessor. The easiest shortcut to do that was to
> use a single board computer. I've seen Ampro, Quark, and 2 others. I
> also did some trivial disk format consulting for one outfit that was doing
> one with an Ampro, although at this point, I can't even remember the name.
>
>
Received on Sat Apr 27 2002 - 02:21:09 BST