IMSAI News?

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Sat Jun 15 22:47:14 2002

That's true, but CompuPro hardware of different families, though they all
claimed compatibility with S-100, didn't even work in different CompuPro
environments, and that wasn't just after the adoption of the standard. In
fact, CompuPro/Bill Godbout was instrumental in watering down the standard to
such extent that it essentially guaranteed the demise of the S-100, since it
allowed for so much incompatibility that not even they could manage it.

The power supply and its management was the least of your worries with their
hardware. However, if your board required +/- 15, which was pretty easily
regulated from the +/- 16, which was seldom limited to 16, you'd be in real
trouble with the 12 volt bipolar supply.

Further, I'd say, though it's not "new" nowadays, it was practiced only a
short time in the life of the S-100. I think the deviation from the standard
practices, not necessarily the "standard," was what led to its death,
actually.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Shoppa" <classiccmp_at_trailing-edge.com>
To: <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2002 8:56 PM
Subject: Re: IMSAI News?


> > My initial reading (more or less my last) of the spec for the new Imsai is
> > that the power supply is a regulated switcher that provides the "standard"
> > voltages (though they're no longer standard) of +/- 5 and +/- 12 volts.
> > Normal S-100 hardware had on-board regulation, hence expected to see +8
and
> > +/- 16 on the bus.
>
> This isn't awfully new in the S-100/IEEE696 world; in the 80's Compupro
> sold a number of IEEE696 systems that distributed regulated +5V instead of
> unregulated ~8V, courtesy of a switching power supply.
>
> To put a "regular" S-100 board in all you had to do was jumper around
> its on-board voltage regulators, no big deal.
>
> Tim.
>
Received on Sat Jun 15 2002 - 22:47:14 BST