Cromemco memory

From: Pete Turnbull <pete_at_dunnington.u-net.com>
Date: Fri Jun 4 17:02:40 2004

Oops, I deleted the original so can't reply directly to it :-(

I hope someone has better info than me, because although I think I have
a 16KZ-K for my Cromemco, the only manuals I can find are for Godbout,
Irvine, Integrand, Tuscan, and a few other memory boards -- none of
which I have!

All I can find is the entry in the 1978 Cromemco Microcomputer Systems
catalogue, which says that it offers expandability to 512K bytes with
bank select, has fully-transparent dynamic refresh, operates at 4MHz
with no wait states, and costs $495 (fully assembled, tested, and
burned in, as the 16KZ-W, is $595).

   "With bank select each memory board may reside in one or more
    of the 8 possible memory banks. An 8-position DIP switch on
    the board is used to select each of the banks in which the
    board resides.

   "The active bank or banks of memory are selected under software
    control. Output port 40H is dedicated to this function. Each
    of the 8 bits of data of output port 40H are used to turn on or
    off the corresponding bank of memory. A "1" in the
    corresponding bit position will turn on the memory bank. A "0"
    will turn it off. All circuitry required to detect the output
    of 40H is included on the memory card itself.

   "Bank select provides a convenient method by which to expand
    system memory space beyond 64K. Bank select also permits the
    implementation of time-sharing systems with a minimum of
    software overhead - up to 8 users can use the system
    simultaneously with each confined to his own bank of memory."

This implies the card can be multiply decoded (to appear more than
once). I imagine if you want it to appear from 0000H to 0FFFFH, you
turn on the switch in position 1, and turn off the rest (unless you
want it to appear elsewhere as well). Similarly to appear from 10000H
to 1FFFFH, switch position 2. Although, since it's easier to provide a
pullup resistor than a pulldown on TTL, likely "switch on" grounds the
line and means a "0". Try it and see!


-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York
Received on Fri Jun 04 2004 - 17:02:40 BST

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