new find: an Intel MDS 800

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwight.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Wed Oct 27 16:59:00 2004

>From: "Joe R." <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
>
>At 02:55 PM 10/27/04 +0000, you wrote:
>>On Wed, 2004-10-27 at 09:35 -0400, Joe R. wrote:
>>> Jules,
>>>
>>> I'd love to hear what kind of hardware, software and manuals you got with
>>> your's.
>>>
>>> Joe
>>
>>I'll have a look and see if I can do some sort of inventory.
>>
>>We've got a series 1 machine as it turns out too (blue case)
>
> AFIK all of the MDS2xxs (including the blue ones) are series II machines.
>I've never heard of anything that Intel designated as a Series I. Most of
>the Series II machines have blue cases but some of them have white cases.
>The white ones are thought to be later machines but no one knows for sure.
>Just to further confuse the issue, ANY of the MDS2xxs can be upgraded to
>series III by adding a 8086 Resident Processor Card. I believe the MDS800s
>can also be upgraded to Series III the same way.
>
> Joe

 I also never heard the term Series I while working there. It
was always MDS800 and Series II or III. I believe Joe is correct
that one can run a 8086 in the MDS800 as well as any of them.
 I have never seen a MDS800 in anything other than blue. I've
seen a white Series II but I don't know if they were from any
specific time period. All the ones we used internally were blue.
I believe I saw a gray one as well.
 Two things were problems with the Series II machines. The early
ones did not have shielding and metal coating in the keyboard case.
These were very succeptable to static discharge from the operator.
 The Series II IOC board had a slow serial rate. Most simply modified
the setup of the clock rate in the ROM's to get the higher serial
rate for the built in terminal.

>
>- I always
>>thought it belonged to one of the group, but apparently it is owned by
>>the museum. I'll have a look-see as to exctly what that one is too (I
>>know there's no docs or disks with that machine though)
>>
>>cheers
>>
>>Jules
>>
>>
>
Received on Wed Oct 27 2004 - 16:59:00 BST