Aster CT-80
Encyclopedia
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
/personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
developed by the small Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
company MCP (later renamed to Aster Computers), was sold in its first incarnation as a kit for hobbyists. Later it was sold ready to use. It consisted of several Eurocard PCB's
Printed circuit board
A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...
with DIN 41612
DIN 41612
DIN 41612 is a DIN standard for electrical connectors that are widely used in rack based electrical systems. Standardisation of the connectors is a pre-requisite for open systems, where users expect components from different suppliers to operate together. The mostly widely known use of DIN 41612...
connectors, and a backplane
Backplane
A backplane is a group of connectors connected in parallel with each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all the other connectors forming a computer bus. It is used as a backbone to connect several printed circuit boards together to make up a complete...
all based on a 19-inch rack
19-inch rack
A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple equipment modules. Each module has a front panel that is wide, including edges or ears that protrude on each side which allow the module to be fastened to the rack frame with screws.-Overview and history:Equipment designed...
configuration. It was the first commercially available Dutch personal/home computer. The Aster computer could use the software written for the popular Tandy TRS-80
TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
computer while fixing many of the problems of that computer, but it could also run CP/M
CP/M
CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...
software, with a big amount of free memory (TPA
TPA
TPA may refer to:* Third-Party Audit, an Audit performed by a specialized & independent Organization* TaxPayers' Alliance, a British free-market lobby group* Tempe Preparatory Academy, a preparatory secondary school in Arizona, USA...
, Transient Program Area) and a full 80×25 display, and it could be used as a Videotext terminal. Although the Aster was a clone of the TRS-80 model I it was in fact more compatible with the TRS-80 model III, and ran all the software of these systems including games. It also had a built in speaker which was compatible with such games software.
Models
Three models were sold. The first model looked like the later IBM PCIBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
(which came on the market years later), a rectangular base unit with two floppy
Floppy
Floppy may refer to:* Floppy disk or floppy disk drive* Floppy disk controller* The Floppy Show* Mr. Floppy from the Sitcom Unhappily Ever After* Mr Floppy Australian rock band* Floppy a character from The Magic Key...
drives on the front, and a monitor on top with a separate detachable keyboard. The second incarnation was a much smaller unit the width of two 5¼" floppy drives stacked on top of each other, and the third incarnation looked like a flattened Apple
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
with a built-in keyboard.
All units ran much faster than the original TRS-80
TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
, at 4 MHz, (with a software selectable throttle to the original speed for compatibility purposes) and the display supported upper and lower case, hardware snow suppression (video ram bus arbitration logic), and an improved character font set. The floppy disk interface supported dual density, and disk capacities up to 800 KB
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
, more than four times the capacity of the original TRS-80. A special version of NewDos/80
NewDos/80
NewDos/80 is a third-party operating system that was made available for the Radio Shack TRS-80 line of microcomputers beginning in 1980. NewDos/80 was developed by Apparat, Inc. of Denver, Colorado....
, (an improved TRS-DOS
TRS-DOS
TRS-DOS was the operating system for the Tandy TRS-80 line of 8-bit Zilog Z80 microcomputers that were sold through Radio Shack through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tandy's manuals recommended that it be pronounced triss-doss...
compatible Disk operating system
Disk operating system
Disk Operating System and disk operating system , most often abbreviated as DOS, refers to an operating system software used in most computers that provides the abstraction and management of secondary storage devices and the information on them...
) was used to support these disk capacities when using the TRS-80 compatibility mode.
For the educational market a version of the first model was produced with a new plastic enclosure (the First Asters had an all-metal enclosure) that also had an opening on the top in which a cassette recorder could be placed. This model was used in a cluster with one Aster (with disk drives) for the teacher, and eight disk less versions for the pupils. The pupils could download software from the teachers computer through a network based on a fast serial connection, as well as sending back their work to the teachers computer. There was also hardware in place through which the teacher could see the display of each pupils screen on his own monitor.
Working modes
The Aster used 64KB of RAM memory and had the unique feature of supporting two fundamentally different internal architectures: when turned on without a boot floppy or with a TRS-DOS floppy, the Aster would be fully TRS-80TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
compatible, with 48KB or RAM. When the boot loader detected a CP/M
CP/M
CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...
floppy, the Aster would reconfigure its internal memory architecture on the fly to optimally support CP/M with 60 KB free RAM for programs (TPA
TPA
TPA may refer to:* Third-Party Audit, an Audit performed by a specialized & independent Organization* TaxPayers' Alliance, a British free-market lobby group* Tempe Preparatory Academy, a preparatory secondary school in Arizona, USA...
) and an 80 x 25 display. This dual-architecture capability only existed on one other TRS-80 clone, the LOBO Max-80
Max-80
The MAX-80 is a personal computer released in 1982 by Lobo Systems . It differed from other TRS-80 compatible computers in that it was not hardware compatible with the TRS-80.-Hardware:...
.
With a special configuration tool, the CT-80 could reconfigure its floppy drivers to read and write the floppies of about 80 other CP/M systems.
A third mode was entered with a special boot floppy which turned the Aster into a Videotex
Videotex
Videotex was one of the earliest implementations of an "end-user information system". From the late 1970s to mid-1980s, it was used to deliver information to a user in computer-like format, typically to be displayed on a television.In a strict definition, videotex refers to systems that provide...
terminal with a 40x25 display and a Videotex character set, The software used the built in RS232 interface of the Aster to control a modem through which it could contact a Prestel service provider.
Sales
Most Aster CT-80's (about 10 thousand of them) were sold to schools for computer education, in a project first known as the "honderd scholen project" (one hundred schools project), but which later involved many more than just one hundred schools. MCP received this order from the Dutch government because their computer met all the technical and other demands, including the demand that the computers should be of Dutch origin and should be built in the Netherlands. Another important demand was that the computers could be used in a network (Aster developed special software and hardware for that). Later however the Government turned around and gave 50% of the order to PhilipsPhilips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
and their P2000
Philips P2000
--The Philips P2000T home computer was Philips' first real entry in the home computer market, after the Philips Videopac G7000 game system which they already sold to compete with the Atari 2600 and similar game systems. There was also an P2000M version with an additional 80-column card for use...
homecomputer even though the P2000 did not meet all the technical demands, was made in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
and did not have network hard nor software.
The company
Aster computers was based in the small town of ArkelArkel
Arkel is a village in the Dutch province of South Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Giessenlanden, and lies about 3 km north of Gorinchem.Arkel is a former municipality. In 1986 it became part of Giessenlanden....
near the town of Gorinchem
Gorinchem
Gorinchem , also called Gorkum , is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of 21.99 km² of which 3.03 km² is water...
.
Initially Aster computer b.v. was called MCP (Music print Computer Product), because it was specialized in producing computer assisted printing of sheet music. The director of the company was interested in Microprocessor technology and noticed there was a market for selling kits to computer building amateurs, so they started selling electronic kits to hobbyists, and employed four persons at that time . They also assembled kits for people without soldering skills, especially the "junior Computer
Elektor Junior Computer
The Elektor Junior Computer was a simple 6502 based microprocessor development board published in the 1980s in the Dutch, German and later French, Spanish and British versions of Elektor/Elektuur, in the form of a series of articles, and four books...
" from Elektor
Elektor
Elektor is a monthly magazine about all aspects of electronics, first published as "Elektuur" in the Netherlands in 1960, and now published worldwide in many languages including English, German, Dutch, French, Greek, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese and Italian with distribution in over 50 countries...
(a copy of the KIM-1
KIM-1
The KIM-1, short for Keyboard Input Monitor, was a small 6502-based single-board computer developed and produced by MOS Technology, Inc. and launched in 1976...
), and the ZX80 from Sinclair. Among the kits sold there were also alternative floppy disk drives for TRS-80 computers. But these needed the infamous TRS-80 expansion interface, which was very expensive, and had a very unreliable floppy disk controller because it used the WD1771 floppy disc controller chip without an external "data separator". To fix this problem MCP developed a small plugin board which could be plugged into the socket for the WD1771, and which contained a data separator, and a socket for the WD1791 to support dual-density operation. Still, the expansion interface was expensive and due to its design it was also unreliable. So they decided to also develop their own alternative in the form of an improved floppy disk controller and printer interface that could be built right into a floppy disk enclosure. The lack of RAM expansion offered by this solution was solved by a service in which the 16 KB RAM chips inside the base unit would be replaced by 64 KB RAM chips.
While this went on MCP renamed itself to MCP CHIP but ran into problems with the German computer magazine CHIP
CHIP (magazine)
CHIP is a computer and communications magazine published by the CHIP Holding in 15 countries of Europe and Asia...
, and had to return to its former name. At that time MCP did also sell imported home computers like the TRS-80
TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
, the Video Genie
Video Genie
Video Genie was a series of computers produced by Hong Kong-based manufacturer EACA during the early 1980s. They were compatible with the Tandy TRS-80 Model I computers and could be considered a clone, although there were hardware and software differences.The computers making up the series...
, (another TRS-80 clone), the Luxor
Luxor AB
Luxor was a Swedish home electronics and computer manufacturer located in Motala, acquired by Nokia in 1985.Originally a manufacturer of tape recorders, radios, television sets, stereo systems, and other home electronics, it launched its first home computer, the ABC 80 in 1978...
ABC 80 and the Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
.
They also sold the exotic Olivetti
Olivetti
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines.- Founding :The company was founded as a typewriter manufacturer in 1908 in Ivrea, near Turin, by Camillo Olivetti. The firm was mainly developed by his son Adriano Olivetti...
M20, a very early 16 bit personal computer that was one of the very few systems to use a Z8000 CPU.
After designing their own fully functional replacement for the TRS-80 expansion interface (which was never commercialized) the company realized that they could do better than just re-designing the expansion interface. They observed that the TRS-80 was a great computer but it lacked in several areas. The display logic and resulting display 'snow' was irritating, as was the missing lower case support, the CPU speed could be improved, the quality and layout of the keyboard was bothersome, and the floppy disk capacity and reliability was low. Also the more interesting software offered for CP/M systems could not run well on a TRS-80. So they decided to designed a TRS-80 and CP/M software compatible computer system, which (following the lead of Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
) they decided to name after a "typical Dutch flower". So they called it the Aster CT-80 (CP/M/Tandy-1980). Why they went with Aster, and not the more well known Tulip is unknown, perhaps they thought it would be to presumptuous, or perhaps the fact that "Aster" is also a Dutch girls name has something to do with it. Remarkably "Aster" was also the name given to a Dutch Supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
much later, in 2002.
The first version of the Aster consisted of four "Eurocard's", one Z80 CPU card with 64KB memory, one Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
MC6845 based video card, one double density
Double density
Double density, often shortened DD, is a capacity designation on magnetic storage, usually floppy disks. It describes the use of an encoding of information, which can encode on average twice as many bits per time unit compared to single density...
floppy disk controller card and one "keyboard/RS232/cassette interface" card. Plus a "backplane card", (which connected all the other cards) and a keyboard. And was intended for hobbyists, to be sold as a kit consisting of the parts and the PCB's for the computer and attached keyboard. After selling a few kits, MCP became convinced there was a much bigger market for an improved model sold as a completed working system. However the original kit version lacked many features that prevented its use as a serious computer system. Because the original designer had left the company another employee completely redesigned most of the system, (adding a display snow remover circuit, true 80/64 column text mode support, (with different size letters for TRS-80 and CP/M mode, so that in TRS-80 mode the full screen was also used, not just a 64x16 portion of the 80x25 screen) with an improved font set (adding "gray scale" version of the TRS-80 mozaik graphics and many special PETSCII
PETSCII
PETSCII , also known as CBM ASCII, is the variation of the ASCII character set used in Commodore Business Machines 's 8-bit home computers, starting with the PET from 1977 and including the VIC-20, C64, CBM-II, Plus/4, C16, C116 and C128...
like characters), and a more flexible and reliable floppy disk controller and keyboard interface plus many other small improvements), also an enclosure was developed for the main computer system, (in the form of a 19-inch rack
19-inch rack
A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple equipment modules. Each module has a front panel that is wide, including edges or ears that protrude on each side which allow the module to be fastened to the rack frame with screws.-Overview and history:Equipment designed...
for the Eurocards) and for two floppy disk drives and the power supply. A software engineer was hired to write the special "dual boot mode" BIOS and the special CP/M BIOS. The "dual boot mode" BIOS actually discovered whether a TRS-DOS, or Aster CP/M disk was placed in the drive, and would, depending on the type of disk, reorganise the internal memory architecture of the system, to either be 100% TRS-80 compatible or optimally support CP/M, with as much "workspace" as possible, and the 80x25 video mode. It also was responsible for switching to ROM BASIC when the system was turned on with the break key pressed, and later supported a primitive LAN system, using the RS232 port with modified cabling. The very first of the ready made computers were sold with the "kit" versions of the euro cards, the version with redesigned cards came a month or so later.
Soon the little shop became much too small and they moved to a much larger factory building nearby (formerly a window glass factory), and started mass producing the Aster for a period of a few years, in which time its staff grew twentyfold.
After the Aster having been a few years on the Market Tandy released its own improved model, the TRS-80 Model 3 computer which solved many of the same problems that the Aster also had solved, but the model 3 still did not fully support CP/M as the Aster did. In the meantime IBM had released its original IBM PC, which incidentally looked remarkably like the Asters base with floppy drives + separate keyboard set-up.
The aster was chosen for Dutch schools by the Dutch ministry of education, in a set-up with eight disk-less Asters, and one Aster with high capacity floppy drives all connected by a LAN based on the Asters high-speed serial port hardware, and special cables that permitted that any single computer on the LAN could broadcast to all other computers. The floppy based system was operated by the teacher who could send programs from his floppy disk, and data, to the student's disk-less systems thanks to the special BIOS in those systems. The students could send programs and data back to the teacher through the same LAN, or could save to a cassette recorder built into the disk-less units. Through a special "video-switch" the teacher was also able to see a copy of each students display on his own screen. About a thousand of such systems were sold for many hundreds of Dutch schools.
Unfortunately, because of cash flow problems (resulting from growing too fast, insufficient financial backing, technical problems, and a sudden problem with Z80 processor deliveries) the company suddenly folded even before it came to full fruition.
Perhaps the Aster computer inspired another Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
computer firm to name their computer after another typical Dutch flower — the Tulip's
Tulip Computers
Tulip Computers NV was a Dutch computer manufacturer that manufactured PC clones. It was founded in 1979, and listed on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in 1984....
Tulip System-1
Tulip System-1
The Tulip system I was a 16-bit personal computer based on the Intel 8086 and made by Tulip Computers, formerly an import company for the Exidy Sorcerer, called CompuData Systems....
which appeared about the same time Aster folded.
Most of the engineers who designed the hardware and software of the Aster went on to design hardware and software for the (then new) MSX
MSX
MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation...
system for a company called "Micro Technology b.v.".
Unreleased add ons
To enhance and modernize the Aster CT-80 the company also designed three alternative video display adapters to supplement or replace the TRS-80 compatible video card, (due to the modular nature of the Aster it was simply a matter of changing the video card, and/or CPU card to upgrade the system).- A very High resolution monochrome video card with blitterBlitterIn a computer system, a blitter is a circuit, sometimes as a coprocessor or a logic block on a microprocessor, that is dedicated to the rapid movement and modification of data within that computer's memory...
and hardware line drawing capability, was designed for CAD applications, based on a NECNEC, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
chip designed for graphic terminals for supercomputers. - A colour video card with spriteSprite (computer graphics)In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene...
capability based on the same video chip (the TMS9918Texas Instruments TMS9918thumb|VDP TMS9918Athumb|VDP TMS9918Athumb|VDP TMS9928AThe TMS9918 is a Video Display Controller manufactured by Texas Instruments.-General information:...
) as the TI99/4Texas Instruments TI-99/4AThe Texas Instruments TI-99/4A was an early home computer, released in June 1981, originally at a price of USD $525. It was an enhanced version of the less-successful—and quite rare—TI-99/4 model, which was released in late 1979 at a price of $1,150...
and MSXMSXMSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation...
computers, designed for gaming, and more creative and colorful educational software. A working prototype of this card was finished. - A replacement card for the original TRS-80 compatible video card, software compatible to the original one, but with added color and very high resolution capabilities. was also on the drawing board. Based on a newer, slightly more flexible, version of the Asters original MotorolaMotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
MC6845 video chip, the RockwellConexantConexant Systems, Inc. is an American semiconductor company, formerly the semiconductor division of Rockwell International. Currently it's privately owned by Golden Gate Capital, an equity firm headquartered in San Francisco.-History:...
6545, it worked by adding a new video mode, one with the ability to reprogram an extended, (2048 characters instead of 256 characters) version of the character set, supported by an extended character memory of the video card that did not use one (8 bit) byte per character, but an 11 bit "word", so it could address each one of the available 2048 unique programmable characters. This meant it could provide a separate programmable character for all of the 1024 (64x16) or 2000 (80x25) characters on the screen. By filling the character pointer memory with values from zero to 1919 this essentially turned the text mode display into a very high resolution graphics mode, with the "font memory", acting as the high resolution Raster graphicsRaster graphicsIn computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
video memory. Because the characters were 8 x 12 pixels this meant that video resolutions of 512 x 192 pixels (in 64x16 character mode), or 640 x 300 pixels (in 80x24 character mode) were created, which was quite high for the time. The "double width" mode of the TRS-80 was also supported, so 256 x 192 pixels (in 32x16 character mode), or 320 x 300 pixels (in 40x24 character mode) were also possible. The video card also supported 16 foreground and 16 background colors per character, by providing one byte per character position (2K) of "color ram". One nibble of such a byte then controlled the foreground color, and the other nibble controlled the background color, a system very similar to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, in fact in the 256x192 mode the display mode was virtually identical to the video of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The color memory was also available in the "normal" TRS-80 and CP/M text modes, which meant that existing TRS-80 and CP/M software could be easily modified to add color. This video card would also support fast scrolling of high resolution color screens for games, because it had the indirection of the character pointers, so it was possible to quickly scroll the high resolution display, (or use other effects) by simply manipulating the 1920/1024 bytes of text video instead of the 24.576 bytes of high resolution video memory.
A hard disk interface was also in the works, which would, add a SCSI
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
interface, and the necessary software. A working prototype was developed that added a 40MB hard disk.
On the software front, work was being done to implement the replacement for the aging "user interface" of CP/M, (the Command Console Processor CCP
CCP
- Politics :* Canadian Conservative Party, majority government* Chinese Communist Party, the ruling political party in the People's Republic of China* Confederación Campesina del Perú, a peasant organization in Peru- Other :...
) with the more modern ZCPR.
Finally a replacement for the aging Z80 processor was being developed in the form of an Intel 8086
Intel 8086
The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors...
board, and additional 512K 16 bit memory boards. Such replacements of CPU and memory system components were possible because the Aster CT-80 was designed to use a backplane that was designed to support both 8 and 16 bit processors, and used a modular Eurocard based design with slots to spare for expansion. In theory the system could support the Z80 and the 8086 simultaneously. Plans were formulated to support CP/M-86 and even MS-DOS.
Unfortunately none of these extensions to the system became available because the company folded before any of them could be released.
External links
- Pictures of the Aster CT-80 model one from a Spanish computer museum, the educational model with an opening for a cassette player is the one on the right
- A picture of the Aster CT-80 model two used for a business application
- A picture of the Aster CT-80 model three without cover (Computermuseumgroningen does not have this item anymore)
