I had a Gifford S100 system running Concurrent CP/M and with telephone-voice interface boards that ran a voice-based dating site I designed and programmed in Pascal. The CPU was a 286 running at 8mhz. It was in NYC, with phone number 212-ROMANCE.
It's interesting to imagine an alternate world of CP/M-86/S-100 vs. MS-DOS/ISA for x86 PCs.<p>The brilliant bit to me is how modular S-100 seems to be with everything on a swappable card. This seems to enable a more granular upgrade and system build approach compared to what we have with modern PCs where most core components are stuck on a single motherboard.<p>I think I might be interested in a modular, semi-disaggregated PC based on a PCI backplane.
IMO S100 is under-represented in the history of microcomputers. That history is usually represented as Apple, Tandy, Commodore and Atari vs IBM PC & clones. But in my opinion, the IBM PC & clone / MS-DOS ecosystem is a fairly direct successor of the S100+CP/M ecosystem.
Sadly, Bill Godbout (mentioned) lost his life in the 2018 California wildfires.[1][2]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/18/bill_godbout_obituary" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/18/bill_godbout_obituary</a>
[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18445340" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18445340</a>
Not super S100 focused but, in the early 80s, I used an Alpha Microsystems S100 multi-user system with a WD16 processor. Later, the company I worked for, a video production company, upgraded to the 68000 based Alpha Micro. The whole company ran on that thing, accounting, writing and I even wrote a small program allowing it to control a Chyron Scribe video character generator in the edit suite.<p>I remember liking the system very much but admit that I didn't have much with which to compare it. I thought their OS, AMOS and AMOS/L, was great.<p>Someone I know who knew Bill Gates fairly well at that time told me that Alpha Microsystems was a company that truly scared Gates.<p>In 1986, I met Dick Wilcox, one of the Alpha Microsystem founders as he was buying a Pitts S2B at the Auburn, WA airport.
My first machine as a mad 14 year old was an S-100 system I build from bare board kits and programmed (initially) from a front panel I designed. My dad eventually took pity on me and got me a serial terminal.<p>I had a Z80 CPU that could handle a blazing 2 MHz IIRC but I remember I could never run at that speed, though I could do more than 1 MHz if I disconnected my front panel.
My first job out of college was at Scion Corporation, who made the MicroAngelo S-100 graphics boards. I did Z80 programming for the firmware. They were nice boards but very expensive so I never got one for myself. The company nearly died when their follow on board for the IBM-PC was a failure, but that's a longer story.
A Sol-20 with monitor sold at an estate auction near me for so cheap not too long ago. I had no idea what it was and had my eye on the Apple IIc instead. I did end up winning a box of S100 bus cards and Sol-20 tapes though, including a "Micro Soft" extended basic cassette. The lot I won also came with an S100 bus "music synthesizer board" which is pretty awesome. I ended up selling most of it off to fund my stupid Vintage Apple collection though.
An adjacent rabbit hole I'd recommend ... (functional but decidedly retro nav on that site)<p><a href="https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org</a><p>Besides S100 you'll find there, the Eurocard Bus which is also long-lived and flexible.<p><a href="https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:ecb:start" rel="nofollow">https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:ecb:st...</a>
S100 was also a widely used industrial bus. My first job out of college (1980s) was writing software for a machine tool where the controller was a custom s100 80186 motherboard and a bunch of ROM and static RAM s100 boards. We used a ton of static RAM (probably 4-6 64k boards, I can't remember exactly) that were battery backed up. You could power cycle the controller and just start back where you left off.
My dad has an IMSAI 8080. It's a gorgeous piece of hardware, with the multicolored switches on that dark plastic panel.<p>He showed me how to write basic programs on it once in assembly, but never much more than that.
My late friend, Lloyd Smith used offer a service where he split the DC power bus and added a second power supply to S-100 systems, because the stock power supplies were undersized for a full card cage.
Another fun modular bus: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/104" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/104</a>
I regret giving away my IMSAI 8080 S-100 box a little over 15 years ago. I should have looked on eBay. If I had, I would have known how collectable they are. I may have been able to get a few hundred bucks for it anyway. It was still in working condition, but all of my (8") boot disks were destroyed by humidity. It booted a few times, but then didn't. While troubleshooting, the disk drive ate all the remaining boot disks.
My mentor worked with drone projects in the early 80s. They flew S100 bus computers. The drone craft were at least half the size of an ultralight manned airplane.
I remember seeing an Altair 8800 next to a "Gandalf" at WeirdStuff in Sunnyvale, a few years before they closed for good. Had no idea what these were.