The Mostek MD (from Micro Design) marked the entry of Mostek Company in the computer business.
It was a development system, aimed at promoting the family of Mostek boards, and built around several boards based on the 64 pin SDT bus.
The hearth of the system was the CPU board holding a Z80 (Mostek) processor, 10 KB of ROM and 8 KB of RAM. A large range of additional cards could be then added: dual Serial port, 32 KB RAM, Analogue/digital converter, 32-bit parallel port, and so on.
Using an ASCII video terminal, a basic one-board system allowed machine code programs to be assembled, debugged and run thanks to the built-in ROM monitor.
A complete system - like the one pictured - could manage two 8" floppy disc drives and run CP/M Operating System. However, these systems were mainly used for managing external devices in laboratories, universities and industry.
Special thanks to John Jenkins
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NAME
MD
MANUFACTURER
Mostek
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
U.S.A.
YEAR
1979
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
Monitor in ROM
KEYBOARD
Depending of the video terminal used
CPU
Z80
SPEED
4 Mhz
CO-PROCESSOR
None
RAM
8 KB expandable to 64 KB
TEXT MODES
80 chars x 25 lines
SOUND
No sound
SIZE / WEIGHT
54 (W) x 60 (H) x 44 (D) cm. / Heavy!
I/O PORTS
2 x serial, 2 x A/D-D/A, 1 x Parallel, video terminal
BUILT IN MEDIA
2 x 8
OS
CP/M
POWER SUPPLY
3 x built-in power supply units (+24V for FDD / + 5V / +12 -12V)
