More than just "ZX81 Giant"

[gammaray]

What is the story here from ZX-Team...

zx81 Screenshot_2017-03-28_14-16-07.png (689.31 KiB) Viewed 2062 times

[msellan]

Whoa!!! I don't even know exactly what it is but it sure looks amazing!

[PokeMon]

I think it is maybe similar to the ZX96 from ZX Team.
http://www.fischerkai.de/zxteam/zx96_e.htm

[Andy Rea]

My guess is it amongst all the peripheral connection sd card and USB that it also had a giant board fitted...

http://www.fischerkai.de/zxteam/giant_e.htm

Regards andy

[siggi]

That is one of Joachim's ZX96, which contains a "Giant" ram board to have 64K ram (and also UDG and HIRES).
It has also a buffered backplane for further cards (Euro-size):
- PIOs to control plotter, egg-painting machine and other things (lower connectors)
- PIO as interface to a VDRIVE2 to have a USB stick as mass storage device (upper right corner)
- PIO as interface to MMC cards having MEFISDOS as mass storage device (2 vertical slots at right side, drive C and D)
- a keyboard/monitor interface for the PS/2 keyboard in front (and the knobs to setup contrast and brightness and inverse picture)
- a serial port (probably a "multi IO card" with serial port and 3 PIOs)

Here it is used to control a plotter via its Z80-PIOs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WudgMDa5kc

It is visible at minute 5:07

Siggi

Giant-Board:
http://www.fischerkai.de/zxteam/giant_e.htm
Multi-IO-Board:
http://www.fischerkai.de/zxteam/multi_e.htm
AT-Keyboard-Interface
http://www.fischerkai.de/zxteam/atkey_e.htm