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62-444: The S-100 bus is a passive backplane of 100-pin printed circuit board edge connectors wired in parallel. Circuit cards measuring 5 in × 10 in (13 cm × 25 cm) serving the functions of CPU, memory, or I/O interface plugged into these connectors. The bus signal definitions closely follow those of an 8080 microprocessor system, since the Intel 8080 microprocessor

124-569: A Cromemco advertisement in the November 1976 issue of Byte magazine . The first symposium on the S-100 bus, moderated by Jim Warren , was held November 20, 1976 at Diablo Valley College with a panel consisting of Harry Garland , George Morrow , and Lee Felsenstein . Just one year later, the S-100 Bus would be described as "the most used busing standard ever developed in the computer industry." Cromemco

186-433: A computer bus to an external backplane, usually located in an enclosure, to provide more or different slots than the host computer provides. These cable sets have a transmitter board located in the computer, an expansion board in the remote backplane, and a cable between the two. Backplanes have grown in complexity from the simple Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) (used in the original IBM PC ) or S-100 style where all

248-490: A few years of interruption. The Arabic edition also ended abruptly. Many of Byte ' s columnists migrated their writing to personal web sites. One such site was science fiction author Jerry Pournelle 's weblog The View From Chaos Manor derived from a long-standing column in Byte , describing computers from a power user 's point of view. After the closure of Byte magazine, Pournelle's column continued to be published in

310-580: A flight to attend the Atlantic City PC '76 microcomputer conference in August 1976, they shared the cabin with Bob Marsh and Lee Felsenstein of Processor Technology . Melen went over to them to convince them to adopt the same name. He had a beer in his hand and when the plane hit a bump, Melen spilt some of the beer on Marsh. Marsh agreed to use the name, which Melen ascribes to him wanting to get Melen to leave with his beer. The term first appeared in print in

372-441: A midplane is often useful in larger systems made up primarily of modules attached to the midplane. Midplanes are often used in computers, mostly in blade servers , where server blades reside on one side and the peripheral (power, networking, and other I/O) and service modules reside on the other. Midplanes are also popular in networking and telecommunications equipment where one side of the chassis accepts system processing cards and

434-413: A month, prompting the owners to re-open the magazine in a pure online format in 1999. It continued as an online publication until 2009, when it shut down, only to be revived in 2011 and then shut down for good in 2013. Wayne Green was the editor and publisher of amateur radio magazine 73 . In late 1974 and throughout 1975, 73 published a number of articles on the use of computers, which resulted in

496-415: A notice announcing Byte magazine. Helmers wrote to another hobbyist newsletter, Micro-8 Computer User Group Newsletter , and described his new job as editor of Byte magazine: I got a note in the mail about two weeks ago from Wayne Green, publisher of '73 Magazine' essentially saying hello and why don't you come up and talk a bit. The net result of a follow up is the decision to create BYTE magazine using

558-488: A particular slot type may be limited in terms of what is currently offered by motherboard manufacturers. However, backplane architecture is somewhat unrelated to the SBC technology plugged into it. There are some limitations to what can be constructed, in that the SBC chip set and processor have to provide the capability of supporting the slot types. In addition, virtually an unlimited number of slots can be provided with 20, including

620-453: A series of six articles that detailed the design and construction of his "Experimenter's Computer System", a personal computer based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor. In January 1975 this became the monthly ECS magazine with 400 subscribers. Green contacted Helmers and proposed starting a new magazine to be known as Byte. The deal was announced in both magazines in May. Green's editorial column in

682-511: A significant response from the readers. The Altair 8800 was announced in January 1975, sparking off intense interest among those working technical fields, including the amateur radio market. Green knew of the Altair because MITS had previously been an advertiser in 73 . This led Green to begin plans for a magazine dedicated to the newly emerging microcomputer market. In 1974, Carl Helmers published

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744-484: Is 16-bits wide in the initial implementation and later extended to 24-bits wide. A bus control signal can put these lines in a tri-state condition to allow direct memory access. The Cromemco Dazzler , for example, is an early S-100 card that retrieved digital images from memory using direct memory access. Clock and control signals are used to manage the traffic on the bus. For example, the DO Disable line will tristate

806-630: Is no doubt that the S-100 market can now be considered a mature industry with only moderate growth potential, compared to the IBM PC-compatible market". As the IBM PC products captured the low-end of the market, S-100 machines moved up-scale to more powerful OEM and multiuser systems. Banks of S-100 bus computers were used, for example, to process the trades at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange;

868-462: Is split into four separate cards, with the CPU on a fifth. He then looked for an inexpensive source of connectors, and he came across a supply of military surplus 100-pin edge connectors . The 100-pin bus was created by an anonymous draftsman, who selected the connector from a parts catalog and arbitrarily assigned signal names to groups of connector pins. A burgeoning industry of "clone" machines followed

930-454: Is typically performed by devices of the 78xx family (for example, a 7805 device to produce +5 volts). These are linear regulators which are commonly mounted on heat sinks. The bi-directional 8-bit data bus of the Intel 8080 is split into two unidirectional 8-bit data buses. The processor could use only one of these at a time. The Sol-20 used a variation that had only a single 8-bit bus and used

992-465: The Altair 8800 used a backplane for the processor and expansion cards . Backplanes are normally used in preference to cables because of their greater reliability . In a cabled system, the cables need to be flexed every time that a card is added or removed from the system; this flexing eventually causes mechanical failures. A backplane does not suffer from this problem, so its service life is limited only by

1054-411: The Byte name back when it officially relaunched Byte as Byte.com on July 11, 2011. According to the site, the mission of the new Byte was: ...to examine technology in the context of the consumerization of IT. The subject relates closely to important IT issues like security and manageability. It's an issue that reaches both IT and users, and it's an issue where both groups need to listen carefully to

1116-570: The IBM model PS/2 . By 1994, the S-100 bus industry had contracted sufficiently that the IEEE did not see a need to continue supporting the IEEE-696 standard. The IEEE-696 standard was retired on June 14, 1994. Passive backplane A backplane or backplane system is a group of electrical connectors in parallel with each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all

1178-581: The SGPIO protocol as means of communication between the host adapter and the backplane. Alternatively SCSI Enclosure Services can be used. With Parallel SCSI subsystems, SAF-TE is used. A single-board computer meeting the PICMG 1.3 specification and compatible with a PICMG 1.3 backplane is referred to as a System Host Board . In the Intel Single-Board Computer world, PICMG provides standards for

1240-457: The 68000. More board space was occupied by signal conversion logic. Nonetheless by 1984, eleven different processors were hosted on the S-100 bus, from the 8-bit Intel 8080 to the 16-bit Zilog Z-8000 . In 1986, Cromemco introduced the XXU card, designed by Ed Lupin, utilizing a 32-bit Motorola 68020 processor. As the S-100 bus gained momentum, there was a need to develop a formal specification of

1302-406: The 8-bit data path and 16-bit address path of the bus and stated that consideration was being given to extending the data path to 16 bits and the address path to 24 bits. In July 1979 Kells Elmquist, Howard Fullmer, David Gustavson, and George Morrow published a "Standard Specification for S-100 Bus Interface Devices." In this specification the data path was extended to 16 bits and the address path

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1364-413: The Altair, the hardware required to make a usable machine was not available in time for the January 1975 launch date. The designer, Ed Roberts , also had the problem of the backplane taking up too much room. Attempting to avoid these problems, he placed the existing components in a case with additional "slots", so that the missing components could be plugged in later when they became available. The backplane

1426-787: The American National Standard IEEE Std 696–1983. IBM introduced the IBM Personal Computer in 1981 and followed it with increasingly capable models: the XT in 1983 and the AT in 1984. The success of these computers, which used IBM's own, incompatible bus architecture, cut deeply into the market for S-100 bus products. In May 1984, Sol Libes (who had been a member of the IEEE-696 Working Group) wrote in Microsystems : "there

1488-501: The August 1975 issue of 73 started with this item: The response to computer-type articles in 73 has been so enthusiastic that we here in Peterborough got carried away. On May 25th we made a deal with the publisher of a small (400 circulation) computer hobby magazine to take over as editor of a new publication which would start in August ... Byte . The last issue of ECS was published on 12 May 1975. In June, subscribers were mailed

1550-571: The December 1988 issue, a continuing feature was Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar , a column in which electronic engineer Steve Ciarcia described small projects to modify or attach to a computer. This was later spun off to become the magazine Circuit Cellar , focusing on embedded computer applications. Significant articles in this period included the insertion of floppy disk drives into S-100 computers, publication of source code for various computer languages (Tiny C , BASIC , assemblers ), and coverage of

1612-537: The SBC slot, as a practical though not an absolute limit. Thus, a PICMG backplane can provide any number and any mix of ISA, PCI, PCI-X, and PCI-e slots, limited only by the ability of the SBC to interface to and drive those slots. For example, an SBC with the latest i7 processor could interface with a backplane providing up to 19 ISA slots to drive legacy I/O cards. Some backplanes are constructed with slots for connecting to devices on both sides, and are referred to as midplanes. This ability to plug cards into either side of

1674-624: The Turkish editions of PC World , which was soon renamed as PC Life in Turkey. Nikkei Byte , with the name licensed from McGraw Hill, was the leading computer magazine in Japan, published by Nikkei Business Publications . It continued Pournelle's column in translation as a major feature for years after Byte closed in the U.S. In 1999, CMP revived Byte as a web-only publication, from 2002 accessible by subscription . It closed in 2009. UBM TechWeb brought

1736-540: The United States Air Force deployed S-100 bus machines for their mission planning systems. However throughout the 1980s the market for S-100 bus machines for the hobbyist, for personal use, and even for small business was on the decline. The market for S-100 bus products continued to contract through the early 1990s, as IBM-compatible computers became more capable. In 1992, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, for example, replaced their S-100 bus computers with

1798-582: The account and $ 1/hour for X.25 access. Unlike CompuServe , access at higher speeds was not surcharged. Later, gateways permitted email communication outside the system. By 1990, the magazine was about half an inch (1.25 cm) in thickness and had a subscription price of $ 56/year. Around 1993, Byte began to develop a web presence. It acquired the domain name byte.com and began to host discussion boards and post selected editorial content. Editions were published in Japan , Brazil , Germany , and an Arabic edition

1860-454: The address lines during direct memory access. Unassigned lines of the original bus specification were later assigned to support more advanced processors. For example, the Zilog Z-80 processor has a non-maskable interrupt line that the Intel 8080 processor does not. One unassigned line of the S-100 bus then was reassigned to support the non-maskable interrupt request. During the design of

1922-479: The artwork of Robert Tinney . These covers made Byte visually distinctive. However, issues featuring cover stories introducing significant hardware such as the Apple Lisa , Apple Macintosh , IBM PC and Commodore Amiga featured product photographs on the covers. From approximately 1980 to 1985, cartoonist Tom Sloan drew full page multipanel cartoons. They covered various computer/tech related themes. Several of

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1984-404: The back of electronics magazines. Byte was published monthly, with an initial yearly subscription price of $ 10. Whereas many magazines were dedicated to specific systems or the home or business user's perspective, Byte covered developments in the entire field of "small computers and software", and sometimes other computing fields such as supercomputers and high-reliability computing . Coverage

2046-453: The backplane interface: PICMG 1.0 , 1.1 and 1.2 provide ISA and PCI support, with 1.2 adding PCIX support. PICMG 1.3 provides PCI-Express support. Byte (magazine) Byte (stylized as BYTE ) was a microcomputer magazine , influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. Byte started in 1975, shortly after the first personal computers appeared as kits advertised in

2108-445: The bus to help assure compatibility of products produced by different manufacturers. There was also a need to extend the bus so that it could support processors more capable than the Intel 8080 used in the original Altair Computer. In May 1978, George Morrow and Howard Fullmer published a "Proposed Standard for the S-100 Bus" noting that 150 vendors were already supplying products for the S-100 Bus. This proposed standard documented

2170-618: The case of Active and Passive Back-planes is while performing maintenance activities i.e. while swapping boards there is always a possibility of damaging the Pins/Connectors on the Back-plane, this may cause full outage for the system as all boards mounted on the back-plane should be removed in order to fix the system. Therefore, we are seeing newer architectures where systems use high speed redundant connectivity to interconnect system boards point to point with No Single Point of Failure anywhere in

2232-483: The connectors were connected to a common bus. Due to limitations inherent in the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) specification for driving slots, backplanes are now offered as passive and active . True passive backplanes offer no active bus driving circuitry. Any desired arbitration logic is placed on the daughter cards. Active backplanes include chips which buffer the various signals to

2294-629: The contacts subscribing, a massive conversion rate. Just prior to planning Byte , Green had a run-in with the Internal Revenue Service . When he told his lawyer that he planned on starting a new magazine, he was advised to put it in someone else's name. He had recently gotten back together with his ex-wife, Virginia Londner Green , who had been listed as the business manager of 73 Inc. since December 1974. She incorporated Green Publishing in March 1975 to take over publication. The first issue of

2356-501: The early 1980s, Byte had become an "elite" magazine, seen as a peer of Rolling Stone and Playboy , and others such as David Bunnell of PC Magazine aspired to emulate its reputation and success. It was the only computer publication on the 1981 Folio 400 list of largest magazines. Byte ' s 1982 average number of pages was 543, and the number of paid advertising pages grew by more than 1,000 while most magazines' amount of advertising did not change. Its circulation of 420,000

2418-405: The facilities of Green Publishing Inc. I will end up with the editorial focus for the magazine; with the business end being managed by Green Publishing. To advertise the new magazine, Green contacted a number of the companies that had been advertising in 73 and asked for their contact lists. He then sent letters out to these people telling them about the new magazine. This resulted in about 20% of

2480-452: The first microcomputer operating system , CP/M . The first four issues were produced in the offices of 73 and Wayne Green was listed as the publisher. One day in November 1975 Green came back to the office and found that the Byte magazine staff had moved out and taken the January issue with them. For the February 1976 issue, the company changed its name to Byte Publications. Carl Helmers

2542-436: The introduction of the Altair in 1975. Most of these used the same bus layout as the Altair, creating a new industry standard. These companies were forced to refer to the system as the "Altair bus", and wanted another name in order to avoid referring to their competitor when describing their own system. The " S-100 " name, short for "Standard 100", was coined by Harry Garland and Roger Melen , co-founders of Cromemco . While on

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2604-478: The longevity of its connectors. For example, DIN 41612 connectors (used in the VMEbus system) have three durability grades built to withstand (respectively) 50, 400 and 500 insertions and removals, or "mating cycles". To transmit information, Serial Back-Plane technology uses a low-voltage differential signaling transmission method for sending information. In addition, there are bus expansion cables which will extend

2666-550: The magazine switched to computerized typesetting, using a Compugraphic system. Shortly after the IBM PC was introduced, in 1981, the magazine changed editorial policies. It gradually de-emphasized the do-it-yourself electronics and software articles, and began running product reviews. It continued its wide-ranging coverage of hardware and software, but now it reported "what it does" and "how it works", not "how to do it". The editorial focus remained on home and personal computers . By

2728-618: The new magazine was the September 1975 edition. Articles in the first issue included Which Microprocessor For You? by Hal Chamberlin , Write Your Own Assembler by Dan Fylstra and Serial Interface by Don Lancaster . Among the more important articles was the introduction of the Kansas City standard for storing data on cassette tape , which was used by most machines of the era. It included advertisements from Godbout , MITS , Processor Technology , SCELBI , and Sphere , among others. Until

2790-462: The now-unused pins as signal grounds to reduce electronic noise . The direction of the bus, in or out, was signaled using the otherwise unused DBIN pin. This became universal in the S-100 market as well, making the second bus superfluous. Later, these two 8-bit buses would be combined to support a 16-bit data width for more advanced processors, using the Sol's system to signal the direction. The address bus

2852-650: The original cartoons are now in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Around 1985, Byte started an online service called BIX ( Byte Information eXchange) which was a text-only BBS-style site running on the CoSy conferencing software, also used by McGraw-Hill internally. Access was via local dial-in or, for additional hourly charges, the Tymnet X.25 network. Monthly rates were $ 13/month for

2914-519: The other connectors, forming a computer bus . It is used to connect several printed circuit boards together to make up a complete computer system . Backplanes commonly use a printed circuit board , but wire-wrapped backplanes have also been used in minicomputers and high-reliability applications. A backplane is generally differentiated from a motherboard by the lack of on-board processing and storage elements. A backplane uses plug-in cards for storage and processing. Early microcomputer systems like

2976-480: The other side of the chassis accepts network interface cards. Orthogonal midplanes connect vertical cards on one side to horizontal boards on the other side. One common orthogonal midplane connects many vertical telephone line cards on one side, each one connected to copper telephone wires, to a horizontal communications card on the other side. A "virtual midplane" is an imaginary plane between vertical cards on one side that directly connect to horizontal boards on

3038-744: The other side; the card-slot aligners of the card cage and self-aligning connectors on the cards hold the cards in position. Some people use the term "midplane" to describe a board that sits between and connects a hard drive hot-swap backplane and redundant power supplies. Servers commonly have a backplane to attach hot swappable hard disk drives and solid state drives; backplane pins pass directly into hard drive sockets without cables. They may have single connector to connect one disk array controller or multiple connectors that can be connected to one or more controllers in arbitrary way. Backplanes are commonly found in disk enclosures , disk arrays , and servers . Backplanes for SAS and SATA HDDs most commonly use

3100-434: The requirements of the other: IT may wish to hold off on allowing devices and software onto the network when they haven't been properly tested and can't be properly supported. But the use of these devices in the enterprise has the air of inevitability for a good reason. They make users more productive and users are demanding them. The Byte.com launch editor-in-chief was tech journalist Gina Smith . On September 26, 2011, Smith

3162-420: The slots. The distinction between the two isn't always clear, but may become an important issue if a whole system is expected to not have a single point of failure (SPOF) . Common myth around passive backplane, even if it is single, is not usually considered a SPOF. Active back-planes are even more complicated and thus have a non-zero risk of malfunction. However one situation that can cause disruption both in

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3224-478: The small town of Peterborough, New Hampshire . In April 1979, owner/publisher Virginia Williamson (née Londner Green) sold Byte to McGraw-Hill . At the time, Byte' s paid circulation was 156,000 readers, making it second only to Business Week in the McGraw-Hill's technology magazine portfolio. She remained publisher until 1983 and became a vice president of McGraw-Hill Publications Company. From August 1979,

3286-416: The system. When a backplane is used with a plug-in single-board computer (SBC) or system host board (SHB), the combination provides the same functionality as a motherboard , providing processing power, memory, I/O and slots for plug-in cards. While there are a few motherboards that offer more than 8 slots, that is the traditional limit. In addition, as technology progresses, the availability and number of

3348-438: The upcoming magazine in 73 , with the goal of shipping the first issue in December 1976 (the January 1977 edition). Byte quickly took out a trademark on "KILOBYTE" as the name for a cartoon series in Byte magazine, and threatened to sue for trademark violations. This forced Green to change the name of the new magazine to Kilobaud . There was competition and animosity between Byte Publications and 73 Inc. but both remained in

3410-478: Was a co-owner of Byte Publications. The February issue has a short story about the move; "After a start which reads like a romantic light opera with an episode or two reminiscent of the Keystone Cops , Byte magazine finally has moved into separate offices of its own." Green was not happy about losing Byte and decided to start a new magazine called Kilobyte . He announced these intentions early, and advertised

3472-527: Was extended to 24 bits. The IEEE 696 Working Group, chaired by Mark Garetz, continued to develop the specification which was proposed as an IEEE Standard and approved by the IEEE Computer Society on June 10, 1982. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) approved the IEEE standard on September 8, 1983. The computer bus structure developed by Ed Roberts for the Altair 8800 computer had been extended, rigorously documented, and now designated as

3534-417: Was in-depth with much technical detail, rather than user-oriented. The company was purchased by McGraw-Hill in 1979, a watershed event that led to the rapid purchase of many of the early computer magazines by larger publishers. By this time the magazine had taken on a more serious journal-like atmosphere and began to refer to itself as "the small systems journal". It became an influential publication; Byte

3596-699: Was published in Jordan. The readership of Byte and advertising revenue were declining when McGraw-Hill sold the magazine to CMP Media , a successful publisher of specialized computer magazines, in May 1998. The magazine's editors and writers expected its new owner to revitalize Byte , but CMP ceased publication with the July 1998 issue, laid off all the staff and shut down Byte ' s rather large product-testing lab. Publication of Byte in Germany and Japan continued uninterrupted. The Turkish edition resumed publication after

3658-442: Was selected as the medium used by Xerox PARC to publicize Smalltalk in 1981. Like many generalist magazines, Byte suffered in the 1990s due to declining advertising sales. McGraw-Hill's publishing arm was sold to CMP Media in May 1998, and the new owners immediately laid off almost everyone in the magazine arm, ending publication with the already-complete July edition. The associated website continued to draw 600,000 page views

3720-455: Was the first microprocessor hosted on the S-100 bus. The 100 lines of the S-100 bus can be grouped into four types: 1) Power, 2) Data, 3) Address, and 4) Clock and control. Power supplied on the bus is bulk unregulated +8 Volt DC and ±16 Volt DC, designed to be regulated on the cards to +5 V (used by TTL ICs), -5 V and +12 V for Intel 8080 CPU IC, ±12 V RS-232 line driver ICs, +12 V for disk drive motors. The onboard voltage regulation

3782-530: Was the largest of the S-100 manufacturers, followed by Vector Graphic and North Star Computers . Other innovators were companies such as Alpha Microsystems , IMS Associates, Inc. , Godbout Electronics (later CompuPro ), and Ithaca InterSystems . In May 1984, Microsystems published a comprehensive S-100 product directory listing over 500 " S-100 /IEEE-696" products from over 150 companies. The S-100 bus signals were simple to create using an 8080 CPU, but increasingly less so when using other processors like

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3844-471: Was the third highest of all computer magazines. Byte earned $ 9 million from revenue of $ 36.6 million in 1983, twice the average profit margin for the magazine industry. It remained successful while many other magazines failed in 1984 during economic weakness in the computer industry. The October 1984 issue had about 300 pages of ads sold at an average of $ 6,000 per page. Starting with the December 1975 issue through September 1990, Byte covers often featured

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