The ST-2900 RAM-512 board is an expansion board that plugs into the ST-2900 CPU board to provide 512KB of extra RAM, typically used for a RAM-Disk or a printer buffer.
RAM-512 board features:
(The new NVRAM/RTC board will have 4x the capacity, yet will be smaller and cost less to build, and will be non-volatile.)
Once I had built and installed a RAM-512 board in my main ST-2900 computer system, I was hooked! It was so much quieter, faster, fewer floppy disk swaps, less wear and tear on the floppy disks and drives, etc. It was bliss! Fortunately I lived in an area where power outages were rare, so I left the system powered up 24/7 and usually didn't lose any data for half a year or more. (Of course I backed up the RAM-Disk contents frequently, just in case.)
One of my industrial customers paid me to write custom software to allow using an ST-2900 CPU and RAM-512 board set as a large printer buffer.
The RAM-512 board is slightly larger than the CPU or FDC boards, to allow for two 60-pin connectors. At the time I designed the board I couldn't find an appropriate stack-thru connector (like the PC/104 bus used 2 years later), or at least not one that was affordable.
The RAM-512 board was announced on page 48 of the September 1985 issue of '68' Micro Journal, and reviewed on page 16 of the June 1986 issue.
(Click on a picture for a larger version.)
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Pictures of bare board. (943-981KB .jpg) |
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Pictures of assembled board. (597-895KB .jpg) |
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PCB artwork (first version). (176-225KB .png) |
"FLEX" was a trademark of Technical System Consultants (TSC).
"OS-9" is a registered trademark of Microware LP.
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Last revised 2022-May-29 22:17 PDT.
Copyright 2018-2022 David C. Wiens.