technico Technico/Rosse info request

[jbdigriz]

Looking for manuals, schematics, software, rom dumps, system pics, board pics, historical info, etc. for Technico/Rosse 9900 development systems including SS-16 and TEC-9900-SS. Currently trying to definitively identify a partial system board set recently sold on Ebay.  There are system pics of an SS-16 on bithistory.org's FB, and there is a TEC-9900-SS flyer on archive.org, but unfortunately neither have clear pics of any of the boards except for the TEC-9900-SS CPU board. This is maybe common to both systems but that's one of the things that needs to be resolved. And if there were any other Technico 9900 systems, that would be helpful to know.

 

Thanks, Ebay pics attached (more available):

[jbdigriz]

You'll notice there are 122 card edge contacts, so, not S-100. I'm attaching a copy of the TEC-9900-SS flyer so you can see that that CPU board is an SBC with no backplane connector. The entire system bus comes off the board via 10 16-pin DIP sockets and ribbon cables. There is some speculation that these are later boards that differ from the "Super Starter System", but I think they're the same, possibly a later revision or production run, and I'm wondering if the card edge connections are possibly some hybrid, extended variant of the S-100 standard or just some ad-hoc bespokery. Still trying to grok how the 8080A-based FDC (second photo, above) would operate in a 9900 CRU-based context.

 

1st photo above appears to correspond with the EPROM board description listed in the flyer, 3rd photo the AIO, maybe. The 4th photo of the unpopulated RAM board would appear to match the flyer's 32K board. Still no actual pics of the boards from the flyer, though.

 

 

TNM_Super_Starter_System_TEC-9900-SS_-_Technico_I_20170922_0066.pdf

 

So, now the question is, did Technico ever make an actual S-100 system? I've seen references over the years, but I'm wondering if that's not a distorted description of the above system. The flyer mentions a Technico/Rosse TR-9000-SS "Super Star" with most of the listed boards. At 1st glance that might look S-100ish. Anybody know?

 

I'm running into a couple of other 9900 and 99105 based systems, too. More later, maybe.

Edited January 10, 2021 by jbdigriz

[jbdigriz]

Woops, almost forgot. Bitsavers has purchased those boards and will be doing dumps of the PROM monitor and FDC ROMS, so that will be a big help. So, support bitsavers by following his scan recommendation, currently 600dpi, 1-bit scans, iirc. Deskew if needed, etc. There are guidelines on the site. Reminds me, I need to get cracking on that 990/1 stuff....

 

 

[jbdigriz]

Board pics and rom dumps now on bitsavers.org http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/technico/TEC-9900-SS/

Thanks Al!

[jbdigriz]

On 5/7/2021 at 1:44 PM, jbdigriz said:

Board pics and rom dumps now on bitsavers.org http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/technico/TEC-9900-SS/

Thanks Al!

More Technico documentation is now available at the URL above, thanks to someone out there who has a system. Kudos to you, whoever you are, and thanks again, bitsavers. An emulation should be possible at this point. I'd tackle it, but right now I'm committed to a lot of other things, and very much behind on them.