Hello all, thanks to your recommendations and helpful feedbacks, I managed to get a *very* basic S100 system running :) I really mean basic, as it only consists in : - a backplane (passive one, a Salota board I got from eBay) - a switched power supply (so far I only use the +7.5V one) - a Z80 Ithaca 1.03 CPU board I got from eBay
I confess I wanted to try myself on completed boards before I start building the cards myself, and I think that was quite interesting... I purchased a scope, an Openworkbench Logic sniffer, both are great and allowed me to debug the Ithaca card that showed several bad solders. I also modified the board to replace the 2708by a a 2732 (my EPROM programmer is unable to program the 2708 and this chip also requires -16V and + 16V I do not plan to install considering these voltages are not needed by the vast majority of boards) I installed the boards and PS on a temporary aluminium frame, until I migrate the whole shebang into the case I received from modushop : <https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-ks5UXjXVna0/U5XWocEeLyI/AAAAAAAAAE8/N7ZLT1vUD_A/s1600/card1.jpg> I debugged the board as it is advised on s100computers.com : a PROM containing HALT instructions, and then a loop containing I/O's. It took me some time to realize how the jump on reset circuitry works and identify that several DIP switches were faulty, but I finally got this working : ORG 0F000H LD B,04H LOOP: IN A,(0FFH) OUT (0H),A DJNZ LOOP HALT <https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-ALQy3O3acUE/U5XYTtp1UPI/AAAAAAAAAFY/aioshftZ6bk/s1600/loop1.png> In the meantime, I ordered some literature (the 7 volumes of S-100 Journal and "Interfacing to S-100 .." by S. LIbes / M. Garetz) and last but no least, several boards from N8VEM : CPU V2, ZFDC, SIO, IDE, SMB, Extender, motherboard, 4Mb RAM, and ROM/RAM. I already received SIO, IDE, and I am impressed by the quality of the PCB's ! I would like to get your advice about which card do you think I should start with ? I am considering building the Serial IO at first as this would allow me to continue the debugging, or would the SMB make more sense ? thanks for your inputs and recommendations, I am really glad I joined this forum ! Cheers Philippe -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "N8VEM-S100" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
