My Recent Project , Vintage Computer Build

[Mr Bump]

Just thought I would share my recent rabbit hole project that has taken me about 4 months to build, A full working replica S100 Bus computer.
@Steep you might recognise your white card guides.

I have 4x power supplies. providing +8v / +16v / -16v / +5v / +12v. the cards are a replica solid state systems 8080a CPU
board running at 2mhz , i also have a modern version of the FDC+ floppy controller board which also provides 64k of ram and also a SIO2 board which provides 2x serial connectors
for terminal access and its running like a dream. I am utilising a modern data storage device for the time being a serial server called an ESP32 which allows me to mount virtual images of floppy disks while i figure out actual floppy drives

.

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

Now, all you need is a copy of Supercalc to work out how much that cost you!

 

[Mr Bump]

Now, all you need is a copy of Supercalc to work out how much that cost you!

oh i know exactly how much it cost me , and it will actually run supercalc and wordstar 4 also an early version of dbase and a few games like Zork.

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

My experience with CP/M was limited to playing with it after working hours.

I was the computer person for a light engineering and component supply company, which got into computers by purchasing most of the liquidated stock from the British distributor of Pertec's micro systems. These were seriously business oriented beasties, each of which weighed around 30KG (the great big 10MB hard drive weighed three times that). We tied up with a company called CAP/BOS for the operating system and business software but I found several CP/M disks in a box full of manuals and thought it would be useful to know how it worked.

 

[cosmicma]

My experience with CP/M was limited to playing with it after working hours.

I was the computer person for a light engineering and component supply company, which got into computers by purchasing most of the liquidated stock from the British distributor of Pertec's micro systems. These were seriously business oriented beasties, each of which weighed around 30KG (the great big 10MB hard drive weighed three times that). We tied up with a company called CAP/BOS for the operating system and business software but I found several CP/M disks in a box full of manuals and thought it would be useful to know how it worked.

didn't Amstrad CPC 6128's use the CP/M operating system for it's 3" disk drive ?
had one in the mid 80's before the atari st / amiga revolution

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

didn't Amstrad CPC 6128's use the CP/M operating system for it's 3" disk drive ?
had one in the mid 80's before the atari st / amiga revolution

The 6128 had a native operating system called (and here's a surprise) AMSDOS. It used CP/M for disk access, according to this page...

https://cpctech.cpcwiki.de/docs/manual/s968se19.pdf

 

[Mr Bump]

I am currently running CPM 2.2 an early version

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

I am currently running CPM 2.2 an early version

I used that on the Osborne 1 I had for a while. I knew some people who were on 3.0 but never got that far myself.

 

[Mr Bump]

I used that on the Osborne 1 I had for a while. I knew some people who were on 3.0 but never got that far myself.

I will also be trying out v3 in the future but i will need to build a new ram board to add to my 64k current setup

 

[Mr Bump]

I know have a Retro VT100 Terminal running and a CPM3 image
I couldn't find anything original in my budget so i bult one from a kit and a Pi-Pico

 

[Mr Bump]

Another massive day managed to get my Teac 5.25" drive working as well.
now booting from a 330k floppy ...woohoo

 

[onomatopoeia]

You weren't tempted by Unix v4 which as recently been recovered from a 50+ year old tape and is now available to download?

 

[Mr Bump]

You weren't tempted by Unix v4 which as recently been recovered from a 50+ year old tape and is now available to download?

haha yeah i think i might be on a page you are, i am ok with unix but i am currently on S100 so its CP/M
i quite fancy a PDP

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

i quite fancy a PDP

I'd skip the PDP series and go for a VAX.

They were great fun to play with and they actually paid me!

 

[PeterSpencer]

Forget DEC and switch to PR1ME!

 

[Mr Bump]

Well a major milestone in the S100 build now have 2x5.25" floppies installed and running.
Using a modified version of CP/M2.2 to run them at a native 1.5mb each instead of the 340k they would have been back in the day.

These drives proved to be a bit of a nightmare, i needed a specific Teac drive a 55gfr and they are hard to get and quite rare and old which meant both drives needed fully stripping down and cleaning to bring them round to 100% , also expensive at £75 each for parts only as they are 40 years old.