Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!lll-lcc!rzh
From: rzh@lll-lcc.UUCP (Roger Hanscom)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: FSF/AT-bus architecture
Message-ID: <2398@lll-lcc.UUCP>
Date: 3 Apr 89 17:26:33 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Livermore Labs, LCC, Livermore Ca
Lines: 36


In <2342@van-bc.UUCP>, sl@van-bc.UUCP (pri=-10 Stuart Lynne) writes:

|In article <5768@ux.cs.man.ac.uk> dente@s2.uucp (Colin Dente) writes:
|
|>I must agree with the original idea - use of this bus *would* give access
|>to loads of cheap peripherals - just so long as nobody suggests it should
|>run MSDOS - I think I'd unsubscribe immediately if that happened!!!
|>
|
|Just a note that various (Televideo and Zenith comes to mind) PC manufacturers 
|actually manufacture machines that don't really have a motherboard. It is
|simply a bus, plus power. They implement the CPU on a card allowing you (for
|example) to upgrade from a 286 to 386 just by adding a processor. 
...........details deleted here...........
|This might be the way to go in developing a low cost hobbyist machine. It
|does allow access to a large number of very low cost cards. You can have a
|10 or 12 slot bus and just plug whatever you want into it.

The more things change, the more they remain the same!  Sounds like the
S-100 bus.  A nifty idea from the past.  Power supply and bus connectors
on the backplane -- any board that conforms to the protocol can be swapped
into the configuration.  What a disaster for the planned obsolescence
folks .... they wouldn't be able to sell us a whole new set of hardware
every n years.  Now, before I get flamed for suggesting such a tacky
thing as the S-100 bus, let me say that I realize that it had (has) some
serious disadvantages, but the **CONCEPT** was, and is, an excellent one.
It worked because of its simplicity and the fact that it was a hobbyist
bus, and did not get taken over by the hi-dollar market.  Face it, buses
like the VME, multi-bus, etc. could never fit this particular niche, not
because they are inappropriate, but because the cards for these buses are
priced beyond the reach of most of us -- for personal use.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
        roger         rzh%freedom.llnl.gov@lll-lcc.llnl.gov
                      ucbvax!lll-lcc!freedom!rzh
    Upstairs, Over a Vacant Lot, Inc.