Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!rpi!crdgw1!ge-dab!tarpit!rtmvax!wbeebe
From: wbeebe@rtmvax.UUCP (Bill Beebe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel
Subject: Re: Intel Wildcard
Keywords: xt
Message-ID: <3088@rtmvax.UUCP>
Date: 17 Feb 90 00:51:59 GMT
References: <1306@jtsv16.UUCP>
Reply-To: wbeebe@rtmvax.UUCP (Bill Beebe)
Distribution: na
Organization: RTmVax Public Unix System, Orlando FL
Lines: 27

In article <1306@jtsv16.UUCP> gil@jtsv16.UUCP (gil) writes:
>
>I've recently read about the Intel Wildcard. Essentially it is
>supposed to be an XT on a card about the size of a postcard. Most of
>the motherboard h/w is on it.
>
>Does anyone have any experience with this product? It looks like an
>ideal platform for some sort of embedded controller.

You're a day late and a dollar short. Intel ceased production of the
Wildcard in 1989, about one year after they anounced it. It came with the
80C88 and all PC peripheral chips and buffers on a card about half the size
of a 5x7 notecard. You added SIMMS and other peripherals such as video and
diskdrives to complete the picture. The card in quantity 10,000 was supposed
to cost around $40. The real kicker was that a development system consisting
of a motherboard with the simm socket necessary to support the Wildcard and
up to three 256Kx9 simms was $699. As an Orlando Intel ATS I did my
dead-level best to try and sell them, to no avail. Only  one company, a
video game company, showed enough interest to try and buy the development
system. I don't know of any design wins in Florida, but in the
Orlando/Melbourne/Tampa area it was an abismal failure. What I did discover
that if anyone wanted to do embedded work that required a board that small
then they designed a proprietary design, usually around the 80C186, if they
wanted to use the 80X86 family. It was more flexible at the time to use the
80C186 and a special set of DOS in ROM for the 186. As long as standard DOS
function calls were used (no direct hardware manipulation) it was quite
practical.