> > Personally, I consider the SS-50 bus boxes to be some of the
>> better designs as far as being able to start using the machine with
>> minimum fuss or additional requirements. As early as 1976 they
>> included a ROM monitor, from Motorolla, and enough I/O to connect a
>> serial terminal.
>>
>I don't know why they didn't become more popular, except that I never
>encountered anyone who had a complete system built on the SS-50. One thing
>that helped interest me in S-100, initially, was that, provided I was running
>CP/M, I could buy a vast supply of used floppy diskettes with things like
>Wordstar, various compilers, various interpreters, ... you get the idea ...
>I'm not sure that was possible for someone using SS-50 hardware. What OS was
>popular on that hardware? Which CPU's?
There's no disputing that the SS-50 bus machines didn't have
the popularity or support of the S-100 bus machines though both
lasted into the early 80's. Most were relatively low priced kit
machines while later ones changed to higher priced machines aimed at
the business market. Early disk systems for them tended to have
quite simples DOS's that were comparable to North Star's DOS. Later
FLEX and Uniflex were almost universally adopted though some people
would run OS-9 as well. One of mine was set up for OS-9 when I
received it. The CPU's used were the 6800 and 6809 with newer CPU's
adopted by builders as time went on, plus a cool dual-CPU machine
from Helix.
Jeff
--
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.cchaven.com
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
Received on Sat Apr 27 2002 - 07:03:45 BST