AT&T 6300s Re: cctalk Digest, Vol 2, Issue 40

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Tue Oct 28 14:02:01 2003

At 10:12 AM 10/28/03 -0600, you wrote:
>On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 20:38, stevew wrote:
>> I can't tell you specifically, but I worked with the 6300's for some
time back
>> in the mid 80's. If I remember, they had a generic 10Mb drive, so I would
>> imagine a Seagate 225 would be about the right generation. The floppies
were
>> black on the units we used, and were also otherwise unremarkable. The
floppy
>> controller I can't comment on, other than I would imagine an ISA
controller
>> would work with them.

   IIRC the biggest problem with putting an aftermarket HD in them was
making it fit. We ended up using HardCArds.



>>
>> As far as I could tell, the 6300 series were essentially an IBM clone
minus
>> the basic. They ran MSDos and PCDos equally well.
>
>Actually they had a custom version of MS-DOS since they used a
>non-standard clock chip and has some other odd things.

  No, Stevew is correct. They ran standard IBM PC DOS with no problems. I
had three friends of mine that bought the 6300s wehn they were new and we
tested them thoroughly. The compatiblity was one of the major reasons that
they bought the AT&Ts. The AT&T DOS also ran fine on the IBM PC. In fact, I
kept a copy of that just to test for compatiblilty and I still have it.
They were one of the few machines at the time that were truely "IBM
compatible". One of my friends still has two of them. (I think the PSU is
now dead in one or both of them.)


 The things are a
>little odd being made by Olivetti which was an Italian Mfg.

   They were odd for a lot reasons. Their construction was very different
from the IBMs. Standard PC cards would fit in them but not much else. They
used 8086 CPU instead of an 8088. Their video resolution for the color
system was higher than IBMs. The color monitor did not have an AC power
cord. It got all of it's power via the interface cable (+150 VDC IIRC).

   The ones here had a lot of trouble with hard drives. We replaced all of
the HDs with Hard Cards within about 2 years.

   Joe

>
>Paul
>
>
>
Received on Tue Oct 28 2003 - 14:02:01 GMT