website/content/museum/intersystems-dps-1.md

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
Intersystems DPS-1	Computers	Professional Computer	U.S.A.	1979	Z80	name image company company_name specs tabs photos adverts comments oc_id source DPS-1 /media/museum/photos/intersystems_dps1_system_1.jpg /companies/intersystems Intersystems label value NAME DPS-1 label value MANUFACTURER Intersystems label value TYPE Professional Computer label value ORIGIN U.S.A. label value YEAR 1979 label value BUILT IN LANGUAGE None label value KEYBOARD Depending on the video terminal used label value CPU Z80, Z8000, 8080, 8086 label value SPEED 4 Mhz label value CO-PROCESSOR None label value RAM 8 KB up to 256 KB label value ROM 2 KB (Monitor) label value TEXT MODES Usually 80x25 terminal label value SOUND None label value SIZE / WEIGHT Unknown label value I/O PORTS 2 x Serial RS232, 1 x Parallel label value BUILT IN MEDIA Various FDD and HDD configurations label value OS CP/M, Unix label value POWER SUPPLY Built-in Power Supply Unit label value PERIPHERALS All of the S-100 cards and associated peripherals label value PRICE About $7200 for a typical system (64 K, 2x600 KB disks, Printer, video terminal) photos adverts title subtitle text image FRONT PANEL ELECTRONIC BOARD with chips removed apparently Thanks to AJ (entrex480.com) for this picture /media/museum/photos/intersystems_dps1_front-panel-card_1.jpg title subtitle text image U.S. ADVERT (1979) Advert said: ... One of the results is our new identity and our new product: the Intersystems DPS-1. An IEEE S-100 compatible mainframe with features that live up to its look. *Dependable* operation to 4 Mhz. Twenty-card capacity, a modular power supply. And something no one else has: built-in break points to give you a faster, more powerful tool for testing software as well as hardware... /media/museum/pubs/intersystems_dps1_pub_1.jpg title subtitle text image BRIDGE COMPUTER VERSION In 1982, the **Bridge Computer Company** (Newton, MASS) sold a Z80 software developper system with the InterSystems mainframe, CP/M 2.2 operating system and various optional programming languages.The configuration was: - 6 Mhz. Z80-B CPU with memory management\ - 256 KB RAM expandable to 1 MB\ - Two 8" or 5.25" F.D. drives, single or double sided\ - Optional 5" or 8" hard disk, up to 40 MB\ - Televideo serial video terminal. Advert said:\ Does this sound too good to be true? Just fill your tank with the BRIDGE 3C formula for SPEED and shift into 'overdrive' with your bridge 3C Compiler System. Leave the other behind, let us provide you with the fuel for higher productivity... /media/museum/pubs/intersystems_dps1_bridge_1.jpg author date text AJ (Iowa/USA) Thursday 29th October 2020 Responding to your page at https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st$1$c$574 In late July of this past year, I acquired an auction lot that had one of these boards for the front panel of one of these systems. Are these images helpful to you? https://drive.google.com/file/d/17_roXmU2H8rzRV1YTeYZJFhb6Haz19DQ/view?usp$sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pN4RpgRt0X5rIbfy1HvzIY2NTorwXZLL/view?usp$sharing\ Google Docs author date text James Gregor Owen (Florida USA) Saturday 14th April 2018 Sat 4/14/18 7:54 am. Well I worked at Ithaca Intersystems in the golden days and lived to tell the tale, not that there''s so much to tell. owenlabs@aol.com author date text Loretta M. (California, USA) Friday 18th August 2017 In my post below, I didn''t finish a sentence. The company I worked for sold Ithaca Intersystems computers with the usual trusty Televideo terminals, with the monochrome monitors. author date text Steven Edelman (USA) Friday 20th July 2012 Anyone interesting in knowing more about Intersystems and the DPS-1 feel free to contact me. I starting the company. Steve Edelman\ Edelman@mail.com author date text Peter Wednesday 22nd February 2012 As I said a few years ago, the DPS-1 works great. Now I managed to get an additional 2 8" drives so that if these fail, I have spares.\ I have been trying to back up all my 8" software (much of it original, serialization diskettes such as MuLISP, MuMath, DRI and MS software et al) so that these can be Enjoyed by the future generations. The systems runs standard CP/M and the disk drives are SSDD drives used as SSSD. It is nice to be able to program using the front panel. I also have many additional boards, such as 256K of RAM (in 4 boards), additional hard disk drive adapters (ST506) and modem. author date text Tgb417 Thursday 9th February 2012 Ithaca College had 2 or 3 of these units in the 1981 to 1984 period. They used a pair of 8" floppies. They were co figured to boot a CPM from the floppies. The keys were on the front of the unit however you did not have to use them to boot. The units had a psd pascal compiler / environment. The units were used to teach assembly language. author date text Peter (Luxembourg) Wednesday 15th September 2010 I have a working Ithaca DPS-1. You can see photos at http://vekinis.com/Computers.html 574 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230320191500/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=574 2023-03-20

InterSystems was the computers brand name of the Ithaca company which previously manufactured various cards for other mainframe makers.

The DPS-1 is based on the S-100 bus. It seems to be a copy of the Altair 8800 and Cromemco Z-1 systems. The case had a 20-card capacity and can support 8 and 16 bit processors.

With a 16-bit Zilog Z8000 processor, the system could take up to 256 KB of RAM and run the Unix operating system, as well as the more usual CP/M.
It was the last computer proposing a front panel with switches and data/addresses LED.

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Mark Mullin specifies:
There were actually two boxes as I recall, one holding the computer and the other holding great big nasty heavy quantum hard disks (20Mb each) - you could actually have more than one drive. The OS it ran was Coherent, a Unix 7 clone from Mark Williams in Chicago.

It was one of the first machines you could get and reliably and affordably run your own UNIX server - one thing that I do recall was that they'd built their own memory management unit on a S-100 card that attached to the cpu over an additional top bus - the card used static high speed ram to hold the segmentation mapping data, and the chips themselves had a nasty habit of walking out of their sockets every month or so - when the system started crashing a lot more than normal, you pulled out the mmu card and reseated all of the chips.

Steven Sorensen adds:
They made 2 styles of cases...one with a front panel, and one without. Later they came out with a cache-bios for their version of CPM, it became a real hot rod. Motherboards were by Godbout I believe. Early CPU boards were a little flakey at 4 MHz, but later cpu boards were great! I replaced the crystal section on the CPU board with a 6 MHz oscillator and Z80b CPU.

We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system, please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.