Solaris, however! :) (Visit to F. Peters)

Remembering the fair words of Dmitry Grigoriev, I will not enthusiastically
admire the Sprinter. But after spending about an hour at arm's length from the working Sprinter, I found myself in its “information field” and completely unexpected thoughts came into my head. And the general director himself helped me with this. Peters. Of course, if only I could get my hands on a comper for at least a couple of days...
Well, oh well, here, as they say, “pay the money and take it.”
However, by the way, 10 finished copies are intended exclusively for St. Petersburg residents. "Running in" of cars should take place near the "main conveyor", as they explained to me. The board is not green yet, but that's it for now! In the future, everything
will be no worse than on pussy mothers. Sales as such have not yet begun,
however, you can exchange money for a Sprinter and in the next month enjoy
comprehensive support f. Peters. Machines are primarily sold to software makers, but also to “beta testers”. The Peters company asks to keep in touch with them regarding any problems noticed. In general, St. Petersburg residents, let's support the St. Petersburg brand as a leader in the development and production of Spectrums! I was about to take the comper, but!
I don’t have a CGA monitor (but by the way, you should have seen what it does on a regular
CGA! still changing palettes at such a speed), in general, I didn’t even realize at first
that it was a CGA.A man was sitting next to him on a chair, buying a stump (Peters is not original in this, they “make a living” for now, as I understand it, by selling and repairing pussy, but by the way, the office is getting closer and closer to Nevsky Prospect
on Vosstaniya Street, and this says something;), there is also a site in the south of St. Petersburg,
where the company’s technical base is concentrated)... so, turned on when Sprinter,
this guy stared in amazement and grunted, what do you have? And this is ours, they say, Sprinter, and he, as they say, found out which process, was very surprised ;)
Hmm, I got distracted... oh, it turns out that making an SVGA output is not so easy, so I need to convince f. Peters, that among potential buyers of the
Sprinter, I am not a black sheep ;) Therefore, I will conduct a survey in the near future! :)
So, in February it is promised to “draw a line”, i.e. present to the people the start-up system software (OS, BIOS, assembler, text editor (already have it, seen it)).
I don’t know anything else yet: a graph is urgently needed. editor, music editor and
terminal for Hayes (I would also add software for local networks,
after all, the card is stuck into the ISA-8 slot). A CD-ROM driver and its own
CD-ROM with software are promised! By the way, software authors are guaranteed super-duper protection,
based on circuit emulation, but more on that below, and payment of money as
income from sales is received. SoSo, any interested software makers, contact the Peters company!
Work is already in full swing on Mortal Kombat, which will use the graphical capabilities of the Sprinter to the full extent!
Well, now about Subj, I only today deeply realized _what_ a computer with virtual architecture is. It would be more correct to call it not Sprinter, but Solaris. And not only spektrumists will buy it!
Here is a paradox: the hardware seems to be the same, but the people sitting on it will be from different
teams!
And orthodox sprinters are just one of the groups of potential
users!
How do spektrumists, especially orthodox spektrumists
to whom I count myself, feel about Sprinter? For me, this is the opportunity to have Pentagon and Scorpio
in one hardware, and even at 21MHz and perhaps, if we can convince
the developers, to gain access to 256x192(16/256) modes. Only they need to be given
a standard on how to implement such regimes.
This is what we are talking about. When you work in emulation mode, you still
work with control registers, as soon as you switch to the "Sprinter" mode
your interaction with the hardware ends with entry points into the BIOS.
Since the 256x192 (16/256) modes have not yet entered the standard, it is necessary for
someone to introduce this standard "de facto".
It is also nice, of course, to have a bimovskaya keyboard, mouse, screw, flop 3",
let's hope CD-ROM,COM and LPT ports and 2 ISA-8 slots. I must tell you that my programmers are plugged into the COM port and ISA-8 :)
What worked before my eyes today was enclosed in a regular MINITOWER,
of a nice design. The board shown to me had standard connection
holes, ISA-8 slots are located in the same place as on the motherboard, the keyboard
connector is in the required base, a long SIMM connector for 4M splits the board
in half.
15ns video memory is installed on sockets (4 packages (256k), expandable to 512k.)
On the right side of the board in a heap is a video controller with a separate small ALTERA chip,
a large ALTERA chip next to the SMD z84c15 (this little spider the size of a fingernail
is soldered to the board, and both logic chips are in sockets). VG93 is noticed, but AY has disappeared
and will be emulated. Well, that's all that my moderately trained eye noticed ;)
during those 2-3 minutes while they showed me the board ;)
Now someone asked what will happen with the regions? I asked the same question.
The answer was something like the following. The Peters company is interested in organizing a dealer network, but will carefully select its partners. They must meet
the high standards that f. Peters is presenting herself.
By the way, certificates for the Sprinter are posted in a visible place under glass :)
For now you can order a board (cash on delivery?) and instructions for"screwdriver
assembly" and commissioning.
About plans for the future. Bye f. Peters is full of optimism and is ready, having completed everything
necessary related to the “launch into orbit” of Sprinter-1, to invest money
in the development of Sprinter-2, with a more powerful processor, but much, if not all,
of course depends on the activity of buyers and software makers.

So here is my short report on today’s visit.
I will also say that Mr. the director is a very pleasant person to talk to :)

With respect, Andrey Savichev /CGS