Because of all the recent inquiries of availability of either bare or assembled boards, I have posted this page to answer your questions. This board was designed in 1987, and it was the second board produced by Peripheral Technology using Motorola's 68K family of microprocessors. The first board, the PT68K1, was very similar to the 'A' version. The PT68K1 was slightly smaller and could be mounted to the side of a floppy drive. The original board used a MC146818 for a clock chip while the 'A' version uses a MK48T02. Otherwise there was little difference between the boards. PT68K1 boards are no longer available. There will eventually be a product page for the PT68K1. This will be provided for historical information. If you want an assembled board, please contact us. Generally it takes about two weeks to provide an assembled board. They are built after receipt of order.
One question is what is the difference between SK*DOS and REX. SK*DOS was sold originally for $150 and REX was eventually released as shareware. REX did not come with an assembler. Palm Beach Software sold an assembler and word processor separately for REX. SK*DOS and REX are very similar and in some cases will read disks from each other as they use the same disk format. The programs are not compatible between the two operating systems, but the look and feel is very close between the two operating systems. Source code for some versions of both REX and SK*DOS is available but as of August, 2020, source code for REX as ported for the PT68K1A has not been located. Source code for REX for the PT68K2/4 is available and could be modified to work on the PT68K1A.
Source code for SK*DOS for the PT68K1 has been located. The changes to convert this code for the PT68K1A are minor. The select register for the floppy controller is different and the clock chip is different between the two boards.
GoTek Floppy Emulator
With good floppy drives hard to come by, to say nothing of blank diskettes, an alternative is needed. A GoTek drive with a Flash Floppy firmware update is capable of reading and writing disk formats as used by SK*DOS, REX and OS9. The GoTek uses USB memory sticks to store images of floppy disks and can hold thousands of disk images on a single USB stick. The images can be emailed as well as downloaded over the internet. We supply boot disk images for the GoTek, so you will need to have at least one GoTek in your system. GoTek's are available from Amazon for about $30; the Flash floppy firmware is free; an OLED display adds a few dollars but should be considered a necessity, so you can see the name of the disk you are selecting. Otherwise you are selecting the disks by a number and not by the name of the disk image.
As a service we will sell a modified GoTek for those not wanting to modify one. Updating the firmware voids the warranty of the GoTek, so the ones we provide will have no warranty.
The instructions for flashing the firmware and adding the OLED can be found here - https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki
Downloads
Click Here to download PT68K1A User manual
Click Here for Binary of Boot EPROM - Boot EPROM for SK*DOS and OS9 - Boot ROM Released in 1987
GoTek IMA Disk Images - Download and copy to your USB Thumb drive.
Click Here for SK*DOS Boot Disk
| PT68K1A-Bare | PT68K1A Bare Board - With 2020 version of Boot ROM, 150ns Delay Line | $70 |
| PT68K1A | Assembled PT68K1A Board with 768K DRAM, 2020 Boot ROM | $175 |
| HDO-IDE | Converter for WH1002HDO port to IDE Port | $16 |
| SD-IDE | SD Memory to IDE converter with 32GB memory card, software preloaded/bootable | $20 |
| GoTek | GoTek with Flash Floppy firmware update, OLED display - no warranty | $60 |
| OS9/68000 | Professional OS9 V2.4 for PT68K1A, Includes K&R C, Editor, Assembler, Linker and over 80 utilities | |
| Ultra C | Ultra C compiler for OS9 | |
| SK*DOS | Star DOS - by Peter Stark - Now in Public Domain - Similar to FLEX | |
| REX | REX Operating System by Dan Farnsworth - Released for free use - Similar to FLEX | |
| BASIC | For REX Operating system | |
| BASICS | Source Code for REX BASIC | |
| REXSRC | Source to REX Operating System |