{"id":12,"date":"2024-01-28T12:44:30","date_gmt":"2024-01-28T12:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ferryhill.org\/?page_id=12"},"modified":"2024-12-09T23:24:00","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T23:24:00","slug":"s-100","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ferryhill.org\/oldcomputers\/s-100\/","title":{"rendered":"S-100"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"S-100<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

According to Wikipedia: “Designed in 1974, the S-100 bus<\/a> was the first industry standard expansion bus<\/a> for the microcomputer industry. S-100 computers, consisting of processor and peripheral cards, were produced by a number of manufacturers. The S-100 bus formed the basis for homebrew computers whose builders implemented drivers for CP\/M<\/a> and MP\/M<\/a>. These S-100 microcomputers ran the gamut from hobbyist toy to small business workstation and were common in early home computers<\/a> until the advent of the IBM PC<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I bought a cabinet with power supply and the S100 bus, and populated it with various boards. Some of these I bought as bare printed circuit boards and poplulated then with components I bought separately. Others I bought as a kit (i.e. board plus components) and assembled them myself. Those that were too fiddly (e.g. memory boards) I bought pre-assembled. I also bought a cabinet to house 8″ floppy disks and installed two of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially I ran the CP\/M operating system, and subsequently added UCSD Pascal<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This system was the starting point both for research work in the local hospital (Computer-aided Diagnosis of Acute Abdominal Pain<\/a>) and and to equip a teaching lab at Sussex University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The system was mothballed 35 years ago. I can\u2019t remember whether it was still working at this point, but on unpacking it wasn\u2019t booting up. So, unless specified otherwise, the \u201cWorking condition\u201d of all of these items was \u201cUnknown\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n