Sol20.org

Newsletters, Articles, Ads

This page doesn't contain any manuals. If you want to see some manuals, then check the manuals page.

If you have any documents which don't appear below, please let me know and maybe we can work out a way to get a scan of it on the website.

Newsletters (link)

Document Pages Size
Processor Technology Access newsletter, Volume 1, issue #1 12 425 KB
Processor Technology Access newsletter, Volume 1, issue #2 38 518 KB
Processor Technology Access newsletter, Volume 1, issue #3
copy contributed by David Wendt
19 332 KB
Processor Technology Access newsletter, Volume 1, issue #4
scan contributed by Mike Noel
38 617 KB
Processor Technology Access newsletter, Volume 2, issue #1
scan contributed by Mike Noel
31 419 KB

A fan of the Sol computer, Stan Sokolow, ran a newsletter for Sol users from August, 1977 through the end of 1983. For the first two years of its life it was known as SOLUS News, and later changed its name to Proteus / News. Over the years, its readership, size, and publication rate varied, but it is amazing it lasted as long as it did, living about twice as long as did Processor Technology itself.

All of the issues here are in PDF format, as image-only scans. The issues of Volume 0 were supplied by Barry Watzman.

   

Stan Sokolow also put together a compendium of all things Sol via a 12 volume "Encyclopedia Processor Technica". Most seem to be lost to the sands of time, but Jason Slade managed to retain Volume #1 after all these years. Thank you, Jason!

   
ALS-8 System Group, Volume 1, Number 1, March, 1977 32 592 KB

The first Processor Tech Access newsletter, Volume One, Number One, is presented in a format that is like the original newsletter. However, it was so painful to get Word to do anything approximately like the complex column layout was incredibly time consuming and painful. The subsequent issues have not recreated the original layout. Instead they just use a linear flow. If any Word experts want to offer advice, I'm listening.

Magazine Articles (link)

This section contains reviews and other magazine articles related to Processor Technology products and the Sol-20 in particular, arranged in chronological order.

Document Pages Size
Computer Bits, Popular Electronics, March 1976
Bob Marsh, of Processor Technology, describes the Computer Users Tape System (CUTS) standard.
3 252 KB
Tiny Time Sharing???, Dr. Dobbs, June/July 1976
by Lee Felsenstein

The VDM-1, card designed by Lee Felsenstein, also became the video logic of the Sol-20. It has a weird feature called "the window shade", which allows blanking one or more rows of video, so rather than having 16 rows of 64 characters, only 15, or 14, etc, rows are visible, and the rest are just blank.

In this article Lee shows himself to be much more adept at hardware than software.

1 41 KB
Popular Electronics, July 1976
by Robert M. Marsh and Lee Felsenstein
cover, page 35, page 36, page 37, page 38

This is the article that introduced the Sol computer to the world. As a dodge to get around the fact that the publisher of Popular Electronics didn't want any more articles on computers, the Sol was presented as an "intelligent terminal." Note that Sol as presented in this article has an integrated cassette player where the numeric keypad ended up, and the motherboard is very different from what was eventually shipped.

The article offered free copies of the PCB artwork and drilling guide for the price of a SASE. Glenn Herrmannsfeldt did so back when and was kind enough to send a copy of it for this web site. It should be noted that this isn't he final design and in fact is reported to have quite a few errors.

Artwork and schematics, 8 pages, 600 KB
5 1.1 MB
Processor Technology Sol-20 Press Release September, 1976
contributed by Philip Lord
2 1.75 MB
VDM-1 Review, Popular Electronics, October 1976. This card was essentially unchanged and integrated onto the Sol-20 motherboard to provide the video text output. 2 172 KB
VDM-1 Review, Byte Magazine, December 1976
by D. Anderson
4 300 KB
Designing Consumer System Peripherals, Digital Design Magazine, February 1977
by Lee Felsenstein and Robert Marsh
contributed by Doug Smythies
2 324 KB
Sol: the inside story, ROM Magazine, July 1977
by Lee Felsenstein
copy contributed by Ray Borrill, scanned and OCR'd by Bob Stek
7 22 KB
User's Report: The SOL-20, Byte Magazine, April 1978
by Dennis E Barbour
5 907 KB
"CORONA" 256-Color Peripheral, Popular Electronics, November 1978
by Jeff Lowenson, Robert Marsh & James Spann

CORONA was the cover article of that months' issue. Alas, the product never made it out of the labs. PROTEUS News, Vol. 2, No. 2, page 22 reported that the product was shelved due to patent issues.

4 494 KB
New product notice in Kilobaud magazine, issue #2, February 1979
contributed by Gil Gutierrez
1 48 KB
Notice of liquidation of assets when Processor Technology abruptly folded.
Ad was placed in Byte magazine, September, 1979.
contributed by Gil Gutierrez
1 9 KB
Prelim Programming Specs VDM-2/Graphic Display, Dr. Dobbs, Nov./Dec. 1979
by Lee Felsenstein

Just after Processor Technology blew apart, Lee Felsenstein published the specs for his prototype VDM-1 replacement card, called here VDM-2. It was much more capable than VDM-1, and much more programmer friendly. It seems like many of these ideas ended up in the Osborne computer, which Lee also designed.

4 160 KB
A Dynamic Debugging System, The Best of Creative Computing, Vol. 3, pp. 303-305, 1980
by Steve North

This is a review of the DDS debugger, and was retyped by Mr. Emmanuel Roche.

1 14 KB
65K RAM Memory Modification For The Sol-20, Microsystems, January, 1982
by Jim Spann
contributed by Paul Birkel
3 177 KB
BASIC/5 strings
by Fr. Thomas McGahee
copy contributed by Ray Borrill
5 28 KB

Advertisements (link)

What follows are ads and brochures.

Document Pages Size
Processor Tech ads appearing in Byte Magazine (1975-1979) 45 27 MB
The Small Computer Catalog (1977 P.T. Catalog) 22 929 KB
Sol Small Computer Systems (glossy brochure) 8 1.2 MB
Sol-20 Ad in Ham Radio Horizons Magazine (March 1977)
contributed by Tom Pinard
1 137 KB
Sol System Suggested Retail Price List (March 1977)
contributed by Doug Smythies
2 121 KB
Sol System Suggested Retail Price List (June 1977) 2 15 KB
Helios II brochure (Feb 1978)
contributed by Doug Smythies
6 785 KB
This three page ad touting the power of a Sol System, or a Subsystem B, came from the May, 1978 issue of Popular Electronics
2 1.0 MB