This page was most recent revised date July 15 2020
Matrox Inc. is one of the few S-100 manufacturers to survive into the 21st century. They built S-100 graphics cards in the 1970's, followed by Multibus cards and others; into the IBM-PC era with PC-compatible cards through to the present day (2007). ("S-100" and "Multibus" are types of computer bus or backplane designs. The S-100 bus was first created in 1976 for the MITS Altair 8800. See this page for links to S-100 cards, companies, and descriptions.) A customer contacted Matrox in late 2007 for info on their S-100 products; he was told no information was available and the company expressed no further interest at that time.
In 2007, a customer asked me for manuals for a ALT-512 Matrox S-100 card.Here's an image of one side, and Here's an image of the other side of that card. The first Matrox S-100 card was the ALT-256; I believe the names refer to memory size, probably in bits not bytes. The cards were first sold in 1978. This card is dated Dec 1979, but has chips on it from as late as 1981.
In 2018, I found an ALT-512 manual. several pages and schematic.
Here's images of two Matrox cards I HAD, as removed from an Intel 286/20 Multibus card with an 80286 processor. The Matrox cards mount on the iSBX connector on the 286 card, as show in this image of one 286 card with mounted Matrox card and mounted memory expansion cards. The other 286 card is identical. in this closeup image you see the details of one of the Matrox cards, note the PAL chip lables in white. In this image you can see the front or back of the pair of unmounted Matrox cards, including a lable on the back of one.
The Matrox cards appear to be identical. On the chip side, they are marked "Matrox WSBX--900 249-06-01 copyright '85 made in Canada". The back has a lable "Type MSBX 900/25" and date Jun 19 1986". The other has the same type and a similar date. Both have serial numbers.
For Multibus cards and manuals I have including Matrox, check this Web page for links to the appropriate Web pages.
In year 2020, I learned that Matrox made the 512 card, and a 24 by 80 card, for Motorola's EXORbus as part of Motorola's EXORciser systems. See what Stan Ruppert showed me, his exo-512 and exo-2480 cards.
I'm interested in any manuals for Matrox. Contact me.
Herb Johnson
Copyright © 2020 Herb Johnson
New Jersey, USA
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