Me too! Holiday greetings to everybody out there. All in all it’s been a good year, our group has grown larger and we have some good new S-100 boards. Hopefully once we get the current orders filled we will have the long awaited 68k and 80286 boards within the early weeks of 2013.
To look forward for in the first half of 2013…
We are on the V4 prototype of the 80386 board. It’s now behaving beautifully in the S-100 bus with a CPU clock rate in the 22-24MHz range. I have finally gotten my descriptors tables working and am rewriting the tried and true 8086 ROM monitor in protected mode. Really neat having 16MG of ram and 32 bit registers!. Next steps there is the DRAM daughter board to get us into the GB range and much faster clock. That however I think will be in the second half of the year.
The Cirrus Logic GD5420 VGA board has been the hardest. Again at the 4th prototype, but still with problems. Probably second half of the year realistically.
I do want to double back and do another version of the EPROM board and a better SMB S-100 board.
For the second half of the year I’m wide open as to suggestions. What do people think of ARM style CPU’s on the bus?
For people starting off I really would like to stress a stepping along approach. Start with the Z80 CPU board (+ support boards), then go to the 8088 to get into16 bit software but stay with 8 bit hardware. The 8086 is a very solid board and the workhorse for the further 16 bit boards. The 80286 is really just a faster 8086. You can access 16MG RAM with descriptors etc. but few do. When I have the bulk of the 80386 monitor done I will try the 80286. The 80386 is turning out to be quite reliable and has spliced very well into the bus. I’m hoping one day to have a Linux type OS going though that will probably need the high powered software types amongst us.
Finally if you get a chance do tell others about our group. There are probably others out there that would like to do this stuff. The more we have on board the better we will all benefit.
Happy new year all
John
From: n8vem...@googlegroups.com [mailto:n8vem...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Lynch
Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2012 9:44 AM
To: n8vem...@googlegroups.com; n8...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [N8VEM-S100:1224] Re: Best wishes and Holiday Greetings
Woo Hoo! Merry Christmas!
Yes, a big “THANK YOU” to everyone in the N8VEM home brew computing community for another successful and fun year!
Here’s looking forward to 2013!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Andrew Lynch
Thanks Douglas and everyone else involved in this great group, for your contributions, be they large or small.
You have all helped make this hobby most enjoyable.
We have a great community.
On Tuesday, December 25, 2012 8:20:19 AM UTC+11, douglas_goodall wrote:
Friends,
I am reminded today of all the great people I have met through the project,
and all the times I have been helped through difficult challenges by the
You all have my best wishes for Happy holidays, and if you are US, happy
New Years as well. Drive carefully and be safe. :-)