IBM PC hacking

[Allison]

I still have a AST 6pack pro in my collection of boards for PCs
along with a Dimond trackstar128 (Apple][ in a PC).  Never used 
either as they were collected long after their time.

Allison




>
>Subject: IBM PC hacking
>   From: jim stephens <jwstephens at msm.umr.edu>
>   Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 17:06:49 -0700
>     To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
>
>I saw an auction which reminded me of the days when the PC and XT
>came out, but before clones or otherwise appeared, and before such
>as AST were dominating the market.
>
>This auction is for a "zukerboard" 576K mem expansion. 6801436037.
>I remember the hype for zucker that they were going to wreck the
>market.
>
>The only reason this has any significance is that I believe this was one
>of the
>AST wannabe's, or even was larger than AST, pre the days when they
>started making systems.
>
>I know of at least Zucker, Tecmar (marty tech, I don't remember marty's
>last name, but he was some sort of PHD ohio type, I think).
>
>A number of companies were based here in Orange County, California,
>and provided a lot of cheap stuff as they cratered, and the local
>scrappers
>got their. stuff and sold it off.
>
>Processor Technology (? I think) went big time and cratered.
>
>I remember a little shop here in Santa Ana which had the first clone of
>the IBM PC.  It was a single board which had 640k memory, allowed
>using 64k memories, instead of the 16K memory that the PC and XT
>earlier models used.
>
>It was called "Superboard" and was no relation to Supermicro, which
>came much later.  It had a bios that usually worked, but also had,
>conveniently, a spot for up to 6 eprom chips, so you could put in a
>PC bios if you could get a copy.
>
>The PC used either EProms, (16K I think) and the Roms that were
>shipped with the BIOS were registered.  The standard Data I/O would
>not read them since they were not programmable, and needed their
>output enabled to read the data.
>
>But once someone had them in the 2716's, it was easy to get them
>running in your superboard.
>
>First systems had a 63 watt P/S, and IBM cards if you could find
>them for video.  Also there was no floppy controller on the first
>board.
>
>Maybe others of you can recall expansion card makers, of such
>things as serial, parallel, memory, floppy, then hard drive, etc.
>
>Jim