Hyacinth, Tuesday, 28 April 12026 HE
2026-04-28 | 26D28 | 2026-118 | 2461159
2026-W18-2 | Q2 | Verano
2013-08-04 – Sigma DP2
fence posts, San José, California
mos_8502 started a first edit on a “Countercomputing Manifesto” looking at available CPUs to start from – and I started fantasizing about the rest of the hardware – and I think a backplane system would be the way to go (think Altair 8800 and RC2014) – backplanes don’t have the speed advantages of motherboard systems but tend to be a lot easier for hobbyists to debug and upgrade
Countercomputing Manifesto Draft 0.0.1 ↗
and (to my wholly untrained eye), an STEbus backplane looks like one of the better options – a variant of the VMEbus simplified for 8-bit processors, it uses 64 of the 96 pins of a DIN 41612 connector – the connector itself is more reliable than the edge connector of STD Bus – and hardware cards are based off a 3U Eurocard (160 mm × 100 mm) – and has the advantages that not only is it non-proprietary, but the hardware was popular during the ’80s and ’90s, and you can still purchase brand new STEbus backplanes, racks and cases, as well as blank 3U Eurocard prototyping PCBs
the day before
the month before
the quarter before
the year before