Re: To put together a system...

Hi, Joe,

Glad to see another person getting into the S-100 machines. I still don't have an operational machine, even though I've been following the group for several years now and have purchased several of the new boards. Great bunch of folks here, though, and lots of knowledge. I do have a 5-slot box with a California Computer Systems Z-80 CPU board and two 16k Static RAM boards. There isn't any provision for external storage, but the CPU board has a built-in serial port. Unfortunately, I haven't had sufficient space to spread things out and troubleshoot extensively, but I have found that acquiring an extender board is going to be an absolute must. I'm current waiting on the last couple of parts to finish my extender so I can get the small machine running, just to get moving. I've also picked up about 30 cards of various types (and in various conditions) from eBay for $15 to $30 each over the last 2 years that I hope to utilize in getting 1 machine completely functional. By that time, I think I'll have a sufficient work area to assemble all of the bare boards that I've accumulated and build either a 12-slot or 19-slot (using a modified Alpha Micro backplane) machine.

Good luck to you. I'm not much help yet but I'm learning. As John pointed out, reading through S100computers.com and the many manuals available really helped me understand a lot of the system in theory.

Regards,

Brian.