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TLM Systems PC-68K ISA 68000 Coprocessor card

Hi!

Please post photos and scan the manuals if you cannot find them online. An ISA 68K has been a recurring interest area for me and I would really like to know more about your board.

At one point I was considering making an ISA 68K board and even found the information necessary for a design. I forget the name of it but there was one hobbyist design posted several years ago which would make a good starting point. However, like a lot of things, it has faded in my memory and I can't recall the details.

We did finally get a working S-100 68K CPU board working though. Several builders got the PCBs working on their systems. Nice!

Great find on your board! Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

PS, Curiosity got the better of me. The hobbyist 68K board is called PC PAR 68000 and I do have scans of the articles. Of course they are in German. If an ISA 68K project were to ever happen it would require some pretty motivated builders and some who could translate the German article. The article includes the full set of schematics, PCB layout, photos, software listing, etc. It looks fairly complete since it was made the late 1980's in Germany which seems to be the "Golden age" of home brew computer projects.
 
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There were ISA 68K board designs, but many of them were self-contained (i.e. memory and peripheral support) because they were used in OCR or laser printer support and similar applications. Didn't the Blue Seed book have a description of a 68K PC-form factor motherboard?
 
Hi

Yes, there was also a PC/XT form factor 68K board complete with ISA slots. I have information on it too. I forget the name though. something like PT68K or something like that. I think one of the N8VEM builders has one or a similar type 68K PC/XT form factor main board.

I've considered that approach too but the PCB is so large that most PCB prototype services won't touch it. It would be very expensive to make prototypes and an even larger undertaking than an ISA board. I explore a lot of project concepts but some are going to have to wait until I win the lottery and can retire a wealthy old man. :)

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
Hi
Yes. Also Sergey has already designed a passive Xi-8088 ISA backplane so an ISA 68K board would be a natural extension of his project.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
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PS, Curiosity got the better of me. The hobbyist 68K board is called PC PAR 68000 and I do have scans of the articles. Of course they are in German. If an ISA 68K project were to ever happen it would require some pretty motivated builders and some who could translate the German article. The article includes the full set of schematics, PCB layout, photos, software listing, etc. It looks fairly complete since it was made the late 1980's in Germany which seems to be the "Golden age" of home brew computer projects.

Do you have the scans available to peruse somewhere? I'd like to see the article just for yucks.
 
It's quite possible that the drive you need to read the disks with needs to be (mis) aligned to match the disks. I'm assuming that you're not running into sticky-shed issues with the disks and carving oxide off of them, of course...
 
Okay, thanks to a different FDD I appear to have successfully imaged the discs with Kryoflux.

I'm not sure how to boot OS9 as yet using the 68K card, a BIOS does not appear to start on boot.

You can download the 2 discs (1 is a boot disc and the other the C Compiler) from here until the end of January:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7bBJ4gXPp85c1ZyNWRNTlhhRVE/edit?usp=sharing

Clem
 
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The Kyroflux images are not terribly useful if you don't have a KF card.

Since this stuff was hosted on a PC chassis, I suspect that the disks are PC-readable. Would it be possible for you to post an ImageDisk .IMD file for each of the floppies?

I suspect that OS9 gets started after MS-DOS gets booted.
 
The Kyroflux images are not terribly useful if you don't have a KF card.

Since this stuff was hosted on a PC chassis, I suspect that the disks are PC-readable. Would it be possible for you to post an ImageDisk .IMD file for each of the floppies?

I suspect that OS9 gets started after MS-DOS gets booted.

I will get around to ImageDisk (perhaps this week or next).......

The software for the http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/ allows easy conversion of RAW images to other formats and it's free!
 
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