Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!pixar!unicom!physh
From: physh@unicom.UUCP (Jon 'Quality in - Quantity out' Foreman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.nsc.32k
Subject: Re: 32000 designers kits
Keywords: Free, Free, Free.
Message-ID: <248@unicom.UUCP>
Date: 27 Jan 88 09:12:20 GMT
References: <187X@unsvax.UUCP> <262@scdpyr.UUCP> <4933@nsc.nsc.com>
Reply-To: physh@unicom.uucp
Distribution: na
Organization: Halcon Co. et al., via College of Marin in California.
Lines: 35


	Its good that you've upgraded the kit.  I'll call tomorrow.

	I have a suggestions though.  It seems sorta pointless to ask
that you change the designers kit, but it would really be nifty if you
could come up with an extention kit that would allow a "suggested
standard" way to add a DMA floppy controller, and possibly a DMA SCSI
port also.  This could be done with the 32203.  (which would be the
basis for the extention kit, you see..) 

At least I think that it could be done with the '203, but am not sure
since my '85 data book doesn't have anything about the '203 in it.  TDS
could support minimal bootstrap disk routines, like read a sector,
write a sector and format a track.  Everything else could be done by
hand.

	I ask this because I have found over the long run that most
homebrew designs start living a life of their own, and a computer
really isn't much fun if it doesn't have some sort of mass storage
on it.  Also, though I haven't tried very hard, I found it a little
difficult to get 32203's.  If you had suggested a "standard" way of
doing things, then designers could have "portable" media to hand things
around with.

	Jon Foreman

ps. I cheated, I made an S100 board out of mine, but it isn't very good,
	and I never got TDS to work with it.
pps. Anyone wanna do a circuit board layout for this?  I'll do it
     if I can find 50 people who want a copy,  since thats how
     many boards I'll end up having to make.
-- 
ucbvax!pixar!\            | For small letters  | ~~~~~~~\~~~   That's spelled
hoptoad!well!unicom!physh | ( < 10K ) only:    |  Jon  }()      "physh" and 
       ptsfa!/            | physh@ssbn.wlk.com |        /     pronounced "fish".