Paul,

Like your reply! I have some older Bunko-Ramo Controllers which were used at Teller Lines for connecting the Terminals to the LAN. These were used all the way upto 1998 and contained a Z-80 CPU. They worked just fine, and probably would still be in service to this day - except for the Mandated "Y2K" Compatability upgrades which caused all the older equipment to be tossed.

IBM's system 4700 used the same approach [4702 Controller running Teller Terminals], but I am unsure of the CPU type [likely to be an Intel 8088, since the 5.25" diskettes contained PC DOS and the Controller's code].

IBM equipment at the branches still boots with 3270 Emulator as a TSR, and now include support for NTFS, FAT / FAT32 [MSDOS] and lately has support for Ethernet 802.3 [10 / 100 Base] within the OS/2 enviroment and on-board. Previous versions only supported 802.5 [4/16 MB Token Ring], so installation of a NIC in the bus was required for Ethernet LANs.

I agree with you 100% about using Monochrome Monitors for Word Processing [when hard copies will be printed only with black fonts - kind of gets hard to have multiple colored fonts end up the way you want them hard copied when viewed on Mono VGA, or Mono EGA / CGA / etc.]. Using simple pixels on the screen isn't such an eye strain!
My first CAD application [on my 386] looked much better on a monochrome display, as opposed to color [My EGA monitor could be switched from color to Mono].

Hey, was that 6800 / 6502 CPU a Motorolla IC??? [class 6xxx]
Just curious.

As to the IBM PC / XT, I seem to recall the PC 5150's bus architecture had 8 bit ISA bus only, and the XT's started using 16 bit ISA slots with the 8 bit ones. Possibly a few more instructions in the ROM BIOS to deal with the 16 bit. Think the PC came with 64K of DRAM, and the XT came with 256K. Also think the XT had an adapter containing 16K BIOS extensions [XT Hard Disk BIOS Extensions].

Speaking of Intel CPUs predating the 386 class, wasn't the reason for the 80186's quick demise due to IBM ignoring Intel reserved interrupts? That CPU combined an 8086 Processor with several Peripherals into one IC [DIP???].

I remember the Winchester drive term from my 286 and 386 time period. Was that drive a 30 sector / 30 MB SCSI drive??? [hence the 30/30 term fitting the Winchester Rifle].
On that subject, anyone remember MCA? The first Plug-and-Play Architecture. If IBM wasn't so "IBM-ish", that architecture might have been used for a few more years, at least by the Clone Builders here and there, instead of only found in Big Blue's machines like PS/2 or System 70.
A friend brought me an IBM PS/2 80486DX2 based PC which used MCA only, and wanted me to put in sound, SVGA adapter and an Internal MODEM. Took me almost an hour to explain why I could only connect an External MODEM [Via DB-9 Serial Port], but nothing else! This was around 1997.
He wasn't too happy when I suggested it was a really good Word Processing machine or something for simple Internet use.

Ahhh, feels good to talk like this again! [Linked Image]

Scott S.E.T.

Scott " 35 " Thompson
Just Say NO To Green Eggs And Ham!