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NorthStar Horizon
The North Star Horizon was a popular 8-bit S-100 bus computer introduced in October 1977. Like most S-100 machines of the era, it was built around the Zilog Z80A microprocessor, and typically ran the CP/M operating system. It was produced by North Star Computers, and it could be purchased either in kit form or pre-assembled. The introductory advertisement for the North Star Horizon computer. The price for a Z80 CPU, 16K of RAM and a single floppy drive was $1599 kit and $1899 assembled. Dual drive systems were $1999 kit and $2349 assembled. The North Star Horizon was one of the first computers to have built in floppy drives as well as being one of the first personal computers to have a hard disk drive. Specifications The computer consists of a thick aluminium chassis separated into left and right compartments with a plywood cover which sat on the top and draped over the left and right sides. (It is one of only a handful of computers to be sold in a wooden cabinet. Later version ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Star Computers
North Star Computers Inc. (later styled as NorthStar) was an American computer company based in Berkeley, California existing between June 1976 (when according to popular rumor it was formed as "Kentucky Fried Computers") and 1989. Originally a mail order business for IMSAI computers, it soon developed into a major player in the early microcomputer market, becoming first known for their low-cost floppy disk system for S-100 bus machines, and later for their own S-100 bus computers running either the CP/M operating system or North Star's own proprietary operating system, NSDOS. North Star BASIC was a common dialect of the popular BASIC programming language. They later expanded their lineup with dual-CPU machines able to run MS-DOS, and a server version running either DOS or Novell NetWare. While initially successful, North Star's sales suffered from the company's adherence to hard sector floppy drives which made software difficult to port onto North Star machines. It was no longer a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daughterboard
In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus slot) on a computer's motherboard (see also backplane) to add functionality to a computer system. Sometimes the design of the computer's case and motherboard involves placing most (or all) of these slots onto a separate, removable card. Typically such cards are referred to as a riser card in part because they project upward from the board and allow expansion cards to be placed above and parallel to the motherboard. Expansion cards allow the capabilities and interfaces of a computer system to be extended or supplemented in a way appropriate to the tasks it will perform. For example, a high-speed multi-channel data acquisition system would be of no use in a personal computer used for bookkeeping, but might be a key part of a system used for ind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Early Microcomputers
{{disambiguation, geo ...
Early may refer to: History * The beginning or oldest part of a defined historical period, as opposed to middle or late periods, e.g.: ** Early Christianity ** Early modern Europe Places in the United States * Early, Iowa * Early, Texas * Early Branch, a stream in Missouri * Early County, Georgia Other uses * ''Early'' (Scritti Politti album), 2005 * ''Early'' (A Certain Ratio album), 2002 * Early (name) * Early effect, an effect in transistor physics * Early Records, a record label * the early part of the morning See also * Earley (other) Earley is a town in England. Earley may also refer to: * Earley (surname), a list of people with the surname Earley * Earley (given name), a variant of the given name Earlene * Earley Lake, a lake in Minnesota *Earley parser, an algorithm *Earley ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unix-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-like application is one that behaves like the corresponding Unix command or shell. Although there are general philosophies for Unix design, there is no technical standard defining the term, and opinions can differ about the degree to which a particular operating system or application is Unix-like. Some well-known examples of Unix-like operating systems include Linux and BSD. These systems are often used on servers, as well as on personal computers and other devices. Many popular applications, such as the Apache web server and the Bash shell, are also designed to be used on Unix-like systems. One of the key features of Unix-like systems is their ability to support multiple users and processes simultaneously. This allows users to run multipl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TurboDOS
TurboDOS is a multi user CP/M like operating system for the Z80 and 8086 CPUs developed by Software 2000 Inc. It was released around 1982 for S100 bus based systems such as the NorthStar Horizon and the Commercial Systems line of the multiprocessor systems including the CSI-50, CSI-75, SCI-100 and CSI-150. The multiprocessor nature of TurboDOS is its most unusual feature. Unlike other operating systems of its time where networking of processors was either an afterthought, or which only support a file transfer protocol, TurboDOS was designed from the ground up as a multiprocessor operating system. It is modular in construction, with the operating system generation based on a relocating, linking, loader program. This makes the incorporation of different hardware driver modules quite easy, particularly for bus-oriented machines, such as the IEEE-696 (S-100) bus which was commonly used for TurboDOS systems. Architecture TurboDOS is highly modular, consisting of more than fort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Control System
A control system manages, commands, directs, or regulates the behavior of other devices or systems using control loops. It can range from a single home heating controller using a thermostat controlling a domestic boiler to large industrial control systems which are used for controlling processes or machines. The control systems are designed via control engineering process. For continuously modulated control, a feedback controller is used to automatically control a process or operation. The control system compares the value or status of the process variable (PV) being controlled with the desired value or setpoint (SP), and applies the difference as a control signal to bring the process variable output of the plant to the same value as the setpoint. For sequential and combinational logic, software logic, such as in a programmable logic controller, is used. Open-loop and closed-loop control There are two common classes of control action: open loop and closed loop. In an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PEEK And POKE
In computing, PEEK and POKE are commands used in some high-level programming languages for accessing the contents of a specific memory cell referenced by its memory address. PEEK gets the byte located at the specified memory address. POKE sets the memory byte at the specified address. These commands originated with machine code monitors such as the DECsystem-10 monitor; these commands are particularly associated with the BASIC programming language, though some other languages such as Pascal and COMAL also have these commands. These commands are comparable in their roles to pointers in the C language and some other programming languages. One of the earliest references to these commands in BASIC, if not the earliest, is in Altair BASIC. DIM W% 4 : REM reserve 4 bytes of memory, pointed to by integer variable W% > ?W% = 42 : REM store constant 42; equivalent of 'POKE W%, 42' > PRINT ?W% : REM print the byte pointed to by W%; equivalent of 'PRINT PEEK(W%)' 42 32-bit va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BASIC
BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers. At the time, nearly all computers required writing custom software, which only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn. In addition to the program language, Kemeny and Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS), which allowed multiple users to edit and run BASIC programs simultaneously on remote terminals. This general model became very popular on minicomputer systems like the PDP-11 and Data General Nova in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hewlett-Packard produced an entire computer line for this method of operation, introducing the HP2000 series in the late 1960s and continuing sales into the 1980s. Many early video games trace their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Star BASIC
North Star BASIC was a dialect of the BASIC programming language for the Intel 8080 microprocessor used on the North Star Horizon and available for purchase on other S-100 bus machines of the late 1970s.Richard Milewski,Micro Mike's baZic release 1, InfoWorld, April 27, 1981 Overview The BASIC interpreter was implemented by Dr. Charles A. Grant and Dr. Mark Greenberg, of North Star Computers, Inc. One notable difference with other dialects of BASIC of the time was the way in which substrings were addressed using an array-like syntax, a concept sometimes referred to as " slicing". For example, in North Star BASIC corresponded to in other dialects. This string addressing technique is analogous to the one used in Fortran, and was introduced to BASIC with HP Time-Shared BASIC and later used on Atari BASIC and Sinclair BASIC, among others. Strings could be of any length, limited only by available memory, but had to be "ensioned" before use. While the language was very similar to o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and predated the use of a computer screen by decades. Early terminals were inexpensive devices but very slow compared to punched cards or paper tape for input, yet as the technology improved and video displays were introduced, terminals pushed these older forms of interaction from the industry. A related development was time-sharing systems, which evolved in parallel and made up for any inefficiencies in the user's typing ability with the ability to support multiple users on the same machine, each at their own terminal or terminals. The function of a terminal is typically confined to transcription and input of data; a device with significant local, programmable data-processing capability may be called a "smart terminal" or fat client. A ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serial Interface
In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. Throughout most of the history of personal computers, data has been transferred through serial ports to devices such as modems, terminals, various peripherals, and directly between computers. While interfaces such as Ethernet, FireWire, and USB also send data as a serial stream, the term ''serial port'' usually denotes hardware compliant with RS-232 or a related standard, such as RS-485 or RS-422. Modern consumer personal computers (PCs) have largely replaced serial ports with higher-speed standards, primarily USB. However, serial ports are still frequently used in applications demanding simple, low-speed interfaces, such as industrial automation systems, scientific instruments, point of sale systems and some industrial and consumer produ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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