[Coco] RiBBS & MM/1

[Ron Bihler]

Very interesting, Blackhawk never sounded right.  However IMS is who I was 
in contact with at the time, after that I lost touch as Life pulled me in. 
I married and started my Scientific Glassblowing Company.  I no longer had 
time to say up all night and code new improvements to RiBBS.

So more on the MM/1, I recall it was going to be a very nice machine. 
Bigger/Faster etc but still run most of the old os9 programs with a simple 
re-compile.  Did that all pan out as planned?  Did it get the software 
support needed?  Using Cheap PC boards would have been so very nice.
At one time it was said it would run Amiga programs or maybe os9 Amiga 
programs, but that was a long time ago and my memory has faded.

I remember some of the key players on continuing RiBBS .  Charles West a 
good tester in my day, and Phil Zielger had helped out a bunch, Warren Hrach 
(Best tester ever).
Does anyone have contact information for Charles West?  We had many a good 
conversation.

I don't recall John Donaldson, he may have taken on the port after Charles 
West.  It has been enjoyable, as I have now learned Charles did release an 
update to RiBBS.  At that time I was so far removed I had no idea.  Very 
cool to see someone bring my Baby forward.  I had been working on a UUCP (I 
think) module to tie into the University mail system.  Never got very far as 
this was sort of Taboo, only University and Government people had access. 
Little did I know this was the start of the Internet and the mail system we 
have now.

Was there a kit version of the MM/1 as well?  I remember I once a Video Tape 
of the MM/1, didn't really do much as the applications where way behind, but 
it looked nice.

A good walk down Memory Lane, some very good memories for sure.

Ron Bihler


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joel Ewy" <jcewy at swbell.net>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 7:33 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] RiBBS


> Dave Kelly wrote:
>> Ron Bihler wrote:
>>> Ok,
>>> So I have been sucked back into the Coco Community.  After doing some
>>> research I can't beleive the following is as strong as it is.  Lot's
>>> of passon and opionons make it very interesting.
>>>
>>> So can someone update me, when I left the MM1 was being intoduced and
>>> only a few of the first editions where being released.  Much of my
>>> interest is in what happened to RiBBS,
>> John Donaldson was doing some updating and porting of RIBBS to the
>> MM1.  He decided to leave his job here in Houston and move to West
>> Viginia. When he did I bought all his Coco OS9 stuff. Shortly after
>> the Penn Fest I sold everything I had at the Chicago Fest.
>>
>> Do not remember who bought it. Maybe someone in this group does. It
>> was on 5 1/4 inch floppies and the MM1 hard drive.  Boisy was it you
>> who bought the computer that John had built from a Paul Ward kit?
>>
>> To keep this update going, Kevin Pease designed a MM1 for Keisler
>> (thats not right, guy who wrote 'ar' the compression thingy)
>> Electronics.  Several people sold it. Bill Whitman, for one. Later
>> David Black took over marketing it.
>
> A little clarification.  There were (at least) two entirely different
> computers marketed as the MM/1.  The original MM/1 was designed and
> built by Interactive Media Systems (IMS).  It uses the Signetics 68070
> and the 66470 VSC.  These chips were also used in some of the first
> generation CD-i players, though the CD-i players used a pair of 66470s
> so they could get 16-bit color.  The original MM/1 also has a backplane
> board (just a simple bus with a resistor pack or two and a couple header
> connectors) that connects the CPU board with the I/O board.  The CPU
> board has floppy, video, keyboard, and a couple serial ports built in,
> along with 1M of RAM soldered onto the board that serves as system and
> video RAM.  The I/O board added (I think potentially 3) more serial
> ports, two parallel ports, SCSI, RTC, 2 8-bit ADC/DAC chips for sound
> in/out, and joysticks, and up to 2M additional RAM in 30-pin SIMMs.
>
> Somewhere along the line, IMS sold the rights of the MM/1 to Blackhawk
> Enterprises (David Graham).  Blackhawk sold remaining stock of IMS MM/1
> equipment, and also had a redesign of the backplane and the I/O board.
> I know that the version 2 backplane and I/O board were done by Kevin
> Pease.  He may have been the original designer of the MM/1 equipment.
> I'm not sure about that.  In this version, the backplane becomes a
> memory board that supports up to 2 4M 30-pin SIMMs.  Memory is moved off
> the I/O board, and a later version of the SCSI chip is used.  It is
> these boards that I was assembling for Blackhawk.  I've got 8M of RAM on
> my MM/1 not including the 1M on the CPU board.
>
> But since there were problems with the Ver. 2 I/O board, David Graham
> also sold AT306 motherboards as the MM/1b while Kevin and Ray Patterson
> tried to work out the bugs in the SCSI interface of the original MM/1.
> I think the AT306 is the same board that Carl Kreider was selling.  This
> was a motherboard with a m68306 processor and an ISA bus so you could
> plug PC peripherals in and take advantage of cheap commodity hardware,
> if you could cook up drivers.  Even though the hardware was very
> different from the original MM/1, David Graham called it the MM/1b
> because the licenses he had for OS-9/68K and the OS-9 Port Pack were
> valid "only for the MM/1".
>
> I didn't think that Kevin Pease had anything to do with the development
> of the AT306/MM/1b, but I won't claim to have authoritative knowledge of
> that one way or another.
>
> JCE
>>
>> John is in the Dallas area now. I get e-mails from him several times a
>> week. Do not know if he is still subscribed to this list, maybe Dennis
>> can look at the file and say yes or no.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Dave
>>
>>
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