Photos of a prototype cartridge-pcb with direct bonded BASIC 2.1 chip. EC UK was looking for possibilities to reduce production cost and GI made these engeneering samples for them for evaluation purposes.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Attached the promised pictures of the very stylish-looking EXDOS-Controller from the Netherlands (Enterface 87/04-05, picture on title). It has a plastic housing and the design looks very much like being original ENTERPRISE . The mechanical structure of the expansion port socket/connector can be seen on the title of Enterface 89/05-06 but I never saw an additional expansion card for that system. The card on top of the "stack" is a prototyping card, so I believe that the EXDOS-Controller was the only professional produced board.
 
An interesting detail is the aluminium tube within the expansion connector. It supports the structure and acts as a cooler for the 5V power regulator too.

They were using the 3mm variant of "Leistensteckverbinder DIN 41612". One part was directly soldered to the expansion port, which gave a very strong connection.
 
In my MINIBUS/Motherboard Expansion Bus I also used this kind of connector, but with 5mm spacing between the two rows. These connectors are ideal for the ENTERPRISE extension bus, because they have 64 pins (2 rows of 32 pins) and they are very well constructed.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

I always thought the German machines and the German expansion ROM are produced by the German company.
Now when I asked about the BRD ROM, the answer totally surprised me!

The 08-59 EPROM and it's contents did not come from ENTERPRISE GmbH. The German ENTERPRISE 128k was the only official foreign version, which was planned, produced and shipped from England. Apart from that there were only english 64/128 machines. The contents of the 08-59 EPROM must have been produced by IS directly.
 
I think, that the story started at a time, when Hegener & Glaser tried to sell the ENTERPRISE 64k as Mephisto PHC. They had to realize, that a pure English machine was difficult to sell, especially as they tried to sell it as a network computer (for schools, ...). Therefore the beginning of the BRD-extension must be somewhere between December 1984 and early 1985. German ENTERPRISE was founded mid 1985 and the German 128k machine was already ready at this point.

About the drive units: For build these dismantle existing EXDOS cards, or used remain EXDOS PCBs?

From the single drive unit only 3.5" version exist or also produced with 5.25" drives?

the German Floppy-Disk-Station was produced in Germany. From England came the following parts: Complete system bus bridges, packed in poly-bags and bare Exdos-controllers without ROM (no case, just the boards, packed in cartons and individual poly-bags). The German producer took these parts and mouted them in the case, together with the power-supply and the fdd-drive itself. He had got a master of EXDOS 1.3 and did eprom-programming by himself.
 
There were no Floppy-Disc-Stations with a 5,25" drive, only that prototype had such a drive. All other stations had the black 3.5" BASF-drive. The reason for powering the controller from the computer was simple: The existing system-bus-bridges, that they had to use (for cost reason) already had the power regulator and delivered 5V to the controller. Therefore only the drive was powered by the built-in psu.
 
As there were no manuals coming with these exdos-controllers, German ENTERPRISE was under pressure: They rushed out a translation of the original manual and simply did photocopies of it. Some of these photocopies were very bad. The IS-DOS manual had the same size and the same quality in the beginning. The A4-sized German manuals came later, when the crew at ENTERPRISE Germany had already changed. As far as I remember it was Michael Leopoldseder (who did the Harddisc-Software later) and me who translated the original manuals again. The translation was done on an ENTERPRISE, with Wordstar 3.0 . I still have the original files in my backups.
 
The EXDOS-Controllers, which were sold in Germany, did all come from England as a kit. These Controllers had no foam and/or carton packages. Furthermore there was also the EXDOS EPROM missing. The producer of the Floppy-Stations completed them with the EPROM, put them in the housing an repacked the stuff. That was the reason, why there were no originally packed EXDOS-Controllers in Germany. You can easily indentify these controllers out of German assembly, because the are all missing the coloured EXDOS-sticker on top.

For which purpose are used the "Dave test" and "Nick test" EPROMs?

It can be the rom inside this cart.

http://m.ebay.com/itm/231452195506?_mwBanner=1

Seems to be from Mr Kopecsy.

 : : :

I asked about the next Enterprise model, which is detailed by Mr. Kopácsy in the interview (1991):
"It is a further development of the 128K. It is looks a flat PC, with a
external keyboard. The EXDOS are on the mainboard, also built in MIDI interface, and hardware network interface. The amount of RAM will depend
about the market prices. CPU are the Hitachi Super Z80, and the OS are the EXOS 3.0. This EXOS know everything what the 2.1 know, and have a graphical user
interface, the EGI (Enterprise Graphical Interface), which looks like the Atari GEM"

The only thing I can tell you in advance is, that the machine, that was mentioned in the interview with Vilmos, is pure fiction. It never existed and the details Vilmos told there were a mixture of facts from the Vulcan-Project (Model 911 or ENTERPRISE X), part of his own developments (MIDI-Interface) and some ideas, we were developing in some talks, while sitting together and having a beer. We were also talking about the 64180 cpu, but there never was a machine running with this CPU and any version of EXOS at that time.