[Elecraft] ELEPRODUCT POLL - Apple (OT)

[Don Brown]

I still have a Helix 6809 SS-50 buss computer out in the garage. This was the final evolution of the SWTPc 6800. 35 amp Sola type regulating transformer for the 8 volt buss, gold plated square Molex pin connectors for the SS-50 and SS-30 buss, 56K of ram and 3 - 5 1/4 floppy disk drives running the Flex operating system in a heavy duty Hammond box. Used a Televideo 910 for I/O. This is all about 1980 stuff. My first computer was a Motorola 6800 eval board with 128 bytes of ram around 1976. I hand assembled and keyed in the programs in hexadecimal on a borrowed terminal. A year or so later I bought a SWTPc 6800 and upgraded to the 6809 a while later. I built the SWTP CRT terminal and dual floppy drives to complete the setup. This all probably had over 500 14, 16, 18 and 40 pin chips to solder in addition to hundreds of bypass caps.

In my current business I still use Motorola chips (68HC08). Code in assembly language and have an installed base of almost 30,000 controllers in the waste water and fish farming industry.

Don Brown

  


> It's fun to pull out my 29-year old copies of "Byte" magazine to 
> recall the
> good ol' early days.  How about spending $480 1975 dollars for a 16K 
> RAM
> memory board **kit**?

One of the reasons I bought a SWTPc 6800 system in 1977, a 4K RAM card 
kit was only $100, versus $250 for an 8K RAM card kit for the S-100 
bus.

Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net<mailto:aa4lr at arrl.net>
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
             -- Wilbur Wright, 1901

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