Re: [N8VEM-S100:295] Request For Comments (NIC Board)

[mike <mi...@pikeaero.com>]

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On 11-06-12 11:23 AM, Andrew Lynch wrote:
> Hi Mike!  Neat idea!  You've got some great S-100 designs we should make
> into prototype boards and make available for the other S-100 builders.  
> 
> Have you updated your original S-100 site on the pikeaero.com website?  I
> can't seem to find it anymore.  Maybe you've moved the S-100 boards to the
> http://8bit.zapto.org/ website?  I recall there were other boards you were
> working on as well like the M8X8, MEM64, HI8, and SPI80 designs.  Would you
> please add those links to the 8bit.zapto.org site as well?
> 

Sure, yes, the old pikeaero.com website crashed hard a while back (a
power supply over-voltage failure that fried everything), and my backup
was like 6 months old, so I made a whole new pikeaero.com eComm site and
started moving all the S100 stuff (fortunately I had recent backups of
that) to 8bit.zapto.org.

Yeah I am slowly putting those boards back up as I go over each one.
Maybe I should just go ahead and put them all up as-is just to get some
input/feedback on them.

I think what Douglas and I where just talking about regarding the 4 SPI
ports (rather than 4 dedicated network ports), would supersede the old
SPI80 design I was working on. I think I like Douglas's idea of rather
than having 4 dedicated network ports running on the SPI bus, have them
be generic SPI mini-daughter-boards so you can make them be LAN ports or
whatever other SPI bus widget you want.

When I have a spare moment I'll revise that design.

> At the moment, I am working with John Monahan and others on various S-100
> projects.  My plate is pretty full at the moment but maybe we could do some
> community projects to get some of those boards prototyped.  Once they go
> through the community build and test, I will offer them along with the other
> boards.
> 

Sounds good to me.

> Making a small batch of prototype boards is not cheap but the best deal I've
> seen is www.33each.com since they'll produce 5 S-100 boards for $150.  I
> would be glad to organize some of the S-100 builders to do some build and
> test like we are going with the S-100 68K CPU board.  Rich Leary, John
> Monahan and I are working on an S-100 6502 CPU board along similar lines.
> 
> If we can get five volunteer builders to buy a prototype board at $30 each
> we can order a batch of prototypes.  There would be some overlap with the
> existing S100computers.com and N8VEM boards but I don't see a problem with
> that.  Also, my friend Neil pointed out there are some other home brew S-100
> designs we could use although I don't fear running out of new ideas anytime
> soon.  :-)
> 
> Maybe we start with the NIC4 board?  Hopefully other builders will chime in.
> 

Sounds good to me. Like I said, I would just like to revise it a little
to include the daughter-board concept that Douglas and I like so much.
What are other people's thoughts on the SPI daughter-board concept?

> Thanks and have a nice day!
> 
> Andrew Lynch
> 


Kind Regards,

Mike Sharkey
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