New find: Nascom.. umm 2.5.. a.. ish

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu Feb 19 16:42:37 2004

>
> Any recommendations out there for good Nascom resources?
>
> I know nothing about these creatures; I went round to pick up a Torch
> floppy drive unit from someone a few days ago and they happened to ask
> if I wanted a Nascom before they threw it out...
>
> It's housed in the biggest, ugliest wooden case ever so that's going to
> have to go! The system board is a Nascom 2, whilst the PSU says Nascom
> 3a - maybe there was a crossover point when that practice was common?

If you get no other help, I should have the schematics, etc, for all that
stuff....

> Inside there's just a system board and memory board, and no bus slots
> for anything more - is the bus anything standard and were other 3rd
> party boards typically added to these machines?

The bus was Nascom special, and was also used on the Gemini (with a few
modifications). Yes, there were 3rd party boards (I have one somewhere
with the Digitalker chipset on it IIRC). It was a fairly popular hobbyist
computer at one time...

However, the CPU board + memory board is a fairly common configuration.
IIRC, there is RAM space on the CPU board (using 4118 1K byte SRAMs). At
the time, there was a ahortage of said chips, so Nascom supplied the CPU
board without them, but offered the DRAM board at a very good price.
Needless to say that's what most purchasers bought.

> Still, a curious one, and my first wooden cased computer. I'll have to

The case is not original (altough, strangely, my Nascom is in a wooden
box..) Originally you just got a pile of PCBs...

-tony
Received on Thu Feb 19 2004 - 16:42:37 GMT