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Exidy Sorcerer S-100 card?

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 6:58 am
by snuci
I posted this on VCF but I'm wondering if anyone here has any experience with this unpopulated card I received with the acquisition of an Exidy Sorcerer II recently. I want to mention that I fully blame Terry for his video on the Exidy Sorcerer that got me interested in the first place :) Thanks Terry!

At the link below are pictures of the Exidy produced S-100 card that I believe to be part of the Exidy I/O Expansion Kit. I don't have any details other than pure speculation because the card has no components on it. I think it's supposed to be a bridge board to an S-100 chassis that would be equivalent to the S-100 Expansion chassis.

Any clues are much appreciated. Here's the link: http://vintagecomputer.ca/the-exidy-sorcerer-mystery/

Re: Exidy Sorcerer S-100 card?

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 7:48 am
by tezza
LOL! Well I'm glad those videos inspired someone. :)

Very interesting. I can't help at all as I don't have an expansion unit and never looked into it. I remember reading somewhere that the Sorcerer did suffer from a similar problem to the TRS-80 Models 1/3 when it came to CP/M i.e. the memory map made it difficult to get the full 64k required for most implementations. From memory it was the reserved space for the cartridge that gobbled up some of it among other things. Perhaps this board tried to address this making the full 64k available?

Re: Exidy Sorcerer S-100 card?

PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 11:41 pm
by snuci
I though I'd post a follow up now that I figured out what that card was. It was, in fact, an Exidy Sorcerer S-100 Expansion Kit card. I know this because I found a second one that is fully populated (but I don't know if it works yet). It was in a small S-100 mini tower, of sorts, that I'm calling the Exidy Tower but it looks homemade from components. The S-100 bus motherboard in it is actually cut to fit into the case.

Here is a post about it with some pics if anyone is interested. It might actually turn out to be a Exidy Sorcerer with a hard drive and that is not a configuration I've heard of before.

http://vintagecomputer.ca/exidy-sorcere ... ry-solved/

I'd be interested if anyone has an Exidy Sorcerer S-100 set up with the expansion box.

Re: Exidy Sorcerer S-100 card?

PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 11:51 am
by tezza
snuci wrote:I though I'd post a follow up now that I figured out what that card was. It was, in fact, an Exidy Sorcerer S-100 Expansion Kit card. I know this because I found a second one that is fully populated (but I don't know if it works yet). It was in a small S-100 mini tower, of sorts, that I'm calling the Exidy Tower but it looks homemade from components. The S-100 bus motherboard in it is actually cut to fit into the case.

Here is a post about it with some pics if anyone is interested. It might actually turn out to be a Exidy Sorcerer with a hard drive and that is not a configuration I've heard of before.

http://vintagecomputer.ca/exidy-sorcere ... ry-solved/

I'd be interested if anyone has an Exidy Sorcerer S-100 set up with the expansion box.

Interesting. Yes, the lengths we had to go to those days just to get floppy disk access!