Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!percival!bucket!leonard
From: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: popular computer affordability (was: Re: Another Leary thing )
Message-ID: <1056@bucket.UUCP>
Date: 17 Sep 88 03:28:58 GMT
References: <14033@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <319@flatline.UUCP> <14185@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <2624@sugar.uu.net> <14292@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Distribution: na
Organization: Rick's Home Grown Unix; Portland, OR
Lines: 40

In article <14292@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> c60a-1bq@e260-4f.berkeley.edu (nunnayourbiznezz) writes:
<My dream cheapo system would be a PClone board mounted on top of a 3.5" drive.
<with space under it for another 3.5 drive (of course).
<It would have TTL and composite mono out.  640K, 8Mhz, all the usual.  
<There would be ports for printer, and rs232.  Only 2 slots: 1 for a hard drive,
<the other for a modem or whatever.  Definitely not a power system, but useful.

Well, someone could buils such a system cheaply enough...

Intel sells the "Wildboard 88" for $50 ($55 with 8087) in quantity 1000.
This is a PC motherboard on a 2"x4" card! All you need is memory, and the
various adapter cards. 

Now consider one multifunction board I've seen. It had the following on
*one* full length card:
Hercules compatible video
clock
Floppy controller
two serial ports
two parallel port
 
I think that with a bit of work and use of surface mount and "chip mount"
(where they bond the silicon chip to the board directly!) we could get this:
Hercules video
CGA video (with TTL, mono composite, color composite)
3 printer ports (all that most versions of DOS support)
4 COM ports
clock
Floppy controller
 
all on *one board. If you used one of those cases intended for two 5.25"
drives, you could get two 3.5 drives, the power supply, this "motherboard"
*and* a couple of full length slots inside. I think the biggest problem
would be finding room for all the connectors on the back :-)

-- 
Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."