Supremetronic Redux

[Scott Allen]

On 6 September 2012 10:30, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> | From: Scott Allen <mlxxxp-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
> | I bought my Poly 88 kit in July 1977 from
> | Computer Mart Ltd.
>
> That seemed to me to be about the first micro done right, at least on
> the surface, so to speak.  It had enough of a monitor in ROM that you
> didn't need a bank of switches.

Yes, the monitor in ROM was one of my reasons for buying it instead of
an Altair.
I was leaning towards getting a Processor Technology Sol
<http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=344&st=1>
but a friend convinced me to get the Poly 88. We bought one each at
the same time (I don't think we got a quantity discount :-)
It cost $925 plus taxes for the System 2 kit. I also bought, from the
same place, a 7" B&W composite input monitor (intended for security
camera systems) for about $200.

Later, I bought a 32K dynamic RAM card, a North Star floppy controller
and a Shugart 5 1/4" floppy drive for it.

I also designed and built an S100 I/O board for it, which contianed 4K
static RAM, lots of parallel I/O ports, ADC inputs, DAC output, and
other stuff.
<http://psleng.dyndns.org/electronics/poly88.jpg>
<http://psleng.dyndns.org/electronics/io_top.jpg>
<http://psleng.dyndns.org/electronics/io_bottom.jpg>

> When did you last turn your Poly 88 on?  I've not turned my Altair on
> in 20 years and now I've heard that I ought to go through a careful
> bring-up procedure because failing capacitors might take a lot of
> other bits with them.

It's probably been about 10 to 15 years since I last had the Poly
running. It may still work but, as you said, I'd like to test all the
big electrolytics and other circuitry in the power supply, under a
dummy load, before using it to power up the system. It's pretty far
down on my "things to do when I get some spare time" list.

-- 
Scott
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