Not rare but unusual thread. — #56

Post #56 by Quadraman

Source Forum	68kMLA
Category	Peripherals
Post Date	Fri, 12 Feb 2010 - 02:45
Original URL	https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/not-rare-but-unusual-thread.12404/

Post

Power Computing Power 80/100/120 machines--the 8100 clone. These have spots for 5 NuBus slots on the motherboard, but one would need to steal the Fat-AMIC chip from a 9150 to implement the two uninstalled slots.

Click to expand...

Is stealing the controller the only mod required?

Click to expand...

AMIC is a 160 pin chip and FAT-AMIC is 208 pin.

The regular AMIC is in 7100 and 8100s

In the Power 80/100/120 the AMIC resides on the I/O daughter card, which is unique to those machines.

to replace the AMIC with a FAT AMIC you'd pretty much have to redesign that card

Their original plan was probably to sell a three slot and a five slot version. The three slot version would use the AMIC I/O card. The 5 slot version would have an I/O card bearing the Fat AMIC.

So the only difference between PCC's three slot and five slot versions would be the I/O card.

So, the question is, was there ever a five-slot I/O card made?

I'm willing to bet at least one prototype machine with the 5 slots enabled was made. It was obviously their intention to utilize those additional slots at some point or they wouldn't have included the pads on the production machines or put the controller on a swappable daughter board.