Last I spoke with the people at Imsai, the machine had some major issues
in my eyes...
First, its no longer a S-100 box. (deal breaker right there)... None
of your existing
S-100 stuff can be used with the machine, and with no expansion bus,
Imsai has turned
one of the first open architecture boxes into something more like a Mac
(super-Eeeek!).
Secondly, it was going to use a ISA VGA board for video display (Eeeek,
not ISA)!
This last bit was really problematic becuse the Z800 cannot execute the
VGA bios code
in the ISA board's rom.
These issues were enough for me to realize that the Series-2 machines
were not for me.
But the idea of having a PC motherboard in there along with the Z800
~could~ make for
a very interesting teaching platform. But once you have the PC
motherboard in there, why
run the actual Z800 CPU at all? Emulation would probably be much faster.
Loboyko Steve wrote:
>Today, I noticed a link on Slashdot about the IMSAI
>Series Two at www.imsai.net. Shipping in July. It
>LOOKS real, but there are mostly drawings and not
>pictures. Uses a Z80 successor CPU. Switching power
>supply, though. $995. Still the beautiful front panel
>that was as good as most mini's. Frankly, I find this
>price hard to believe - too low, given the super
>quality of the original machine and the volume this
>might be made in.
>
>Does even discussing this violate the 10 year rule?
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
>http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
>
Received on Sat Jun 15 2002 - 09:04:24 BST