Homebrew STG card - CRAZY-5

["Arne Chr. Jorgensen" <instel-at-online.no>]

Hi guys,

I don't know how much more you can take :)


The idea is just that,  it is pretty okay to make your own simple cards for the
ISA bus,  and this would at least give us plenty of them.  There is 8 in an AT.

I few thing could make some trouble.  The bios may complain if it don't find a
keyboard or a display.  I have a few IBM 286-ATs stowed away.  They used a
setup diskette, and I don't know if what you can do in setup.  ( I don't have
the original setup disks, and someone gave me these machines without the
diskette - so using debug and some guesswork,  I wrote my own diskettes - and
thus I have no idea what options is available on the original ones )

But here there is something else I would like to say:   All of these older
machines had very good documentation.  And it was possible to get the listing
of the whole bios from IBM.  ( I know, because I borrowed one from someone who
had ordered a set - years ago :)

This could be a bit difficult maybe for an individual,  but if NIST would like
this idea, - I think it would be possible.  This would certainly give a lot
more interesting  things one might do. 

I just wanted to add this info.

I don't know if any at NIST would like the idea, and we might have to work out
most ourselves.  But if we could get some idea on an API, and other stuff one
might need,  then I think this would be possible.  Just say you wanted 8 servo
motor running.  Even if Paul just had one encoder and DAC on the board, there
would be room for 8 of these cards.  The real benefit would be that you could
make some simple DIY cards,  and fit everything nice into the box, and make
terminals and other stuff as you like.  No fuzz with ribbon cables to another
one. 

Well,  I just passed on this idea, and it will be up to you.  But if we should
try this,  then we need to find out how we best could make it modular and easy
to hook up with the EMC.  

You could run DOS,  but I would like to not to.  There is probably some
compiler one could use on the linux box,  and the nice thing would be to do
whatever needs to be done there,  then just download a memory image.  But for a
start,  you may use DOS - and there is a TCP/IP network version available from
Microsoft.  I have used it.  

Well,  this is what I had to say for now.  Let me hear what you think of this. 

//ARNE