It's been a hell of a week!, er WEEKS, MONTHS! VERY OT

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sat Feb 5 17:44:58 2005

> It's worth noting, in defense of the earliest PeeCee hardware, that it's
> composed entirely of plain generic chips which are well documented.
> There's no proprietary 'chipset' in the motherboard of my IBM PC-AT,
> just TTL goodness and some Intel 82xx LSI chips. And all the schematics

Actually, there are also a few PALs (or HALs, which are the
mask-programmed version), a couple of address decoder PROMs, and the
keyboard controller microcontorller ROM which are _not_ documented
officially.

But the IBM TechRefs for the PC, XT, AT, PCjr are very well produced
documents, full of information. It's a pity this stopped with the PS/2 --
I have the PS/2 Hardwre Interface Technical Refernce, and there are no
schematics or anything like that. It's still a useful manual, though.

It's also a pity the PC hardware was so mis-designed...

-tony
Received on Sat Feb 05 2005 - 17:44:58 GMT