Because the SCPC88 can be configured in so many different ways, it is difficult to make many general recommendations about using it, mainly because the software will determine exactly how it is used. There are two obvious situations where it can be employed, and a summary of them may suggest other possibilities.
Here the SCPC88 runs software created on another computer, which is transferred either by blowing an EPROM or by downloading machine-code into RAM. This will require an EPROM already present (in the SCPC88 EPROM socket) which contains code to download and debug your code.
The SCPC88 can be expanded to a disk-based system running PCDOS, or MSDOS, with the addition of a disk-controller board. PCDOS is primarily a single-user system limited to 640k.
There are some general points to note when using the board for the first time.
If you are using it with any other STEbus board on the bus, a terminator should be installed. This is partly to reduce reflections, although these are not usually serious on short buses, and partly because some lines are open-collector and require pull-ups.
A reset switch may be connected to LK1.
Boards are tested with jumpers in the standard configuration as shown in Section 4. If you have altered the jumpers and the board does not work, restore the jumpers to the original setting and try it again before returning it for repair.
Timer channel 0 is tied to interrupt channel 0, channel 1 is used for refreshing DRAMs, channel 2 is used for the speaker port.
DMA channel 0 is used for refreshing the DRAMs. Channel 2 is used for disk transfers. There are no DMA channels available to the user.