Subject: Do you recognize these boards?

From: "Patrick Rigney" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Apr 2 20:33:00 2003

Does anyone recognize these three boards?  I haven't had much luck with
Google...

http://www.rigneyfamily.com/patrick/

Warning: LARGE graphics... best avoided if you are on a slow connection.

--Patrick

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From: jim <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Apr 2 21:48:00 2003

> Warning: LARGE graphics... best avoided if you are on a slow connection.

middle photo D***13 is an SMD controller, two 26 pin and a 60pin right?

Top one smells like an ANSI of same time period, which had a 50 pin, and
radials of the 26 or 30 some pin variety.

no useful guess on host.

no useful guess on bottom one at all, maybe it's std bus? but the gold edge
connectors look too narrow for that.

Jim

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From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Apr 2 22:23:01 2003

> http://www.rigneyfamily.com/patrick/

The first two remind me of boards I've been given out of PBXs.  The
one marked '8" HDC' has connectors consistent with SMD drive cables
(60-pin, plus 2 x 26 pin), and there were plenty of them at 8 inches
and up (10" for a Fuji Eagle, IIRC; plus many at 14")

The CPU board seems to have a two serials and a wide parallel port.
That looks like "75188" below the connector marked "P3", a standard
RS-232 transciever chip.  The others in that area are probably the
rest of the line drivers.  The 6821 is a "PIA" chip, with two 8-bit
parallel ports and several handshaking lines.  Common in 6502 and 6809
designs.  We had one on our early COMBOARD (MC68000) products.  Looks
like 22 DRAMs?  ECC?

The name "PX62" suggests to me that they are from a PBX.  Dunno what
bus that is, but the layout and the silk-screen remind me of Japanese
boards, FWIW.

No idea what the third one is.

-ethan

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From: "J.C.Wren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Apr 2 22:47:00 2003

The TMS9914 is a GPIB controller.  So you've got a Z80, GPIB controller, 8
16 pin sockets that are likely 16k x 1 dynamic RAMs, 28 pin EPROM socket
(likely a 27C256), a CTC (Counter Timer Chip), and the 8255 gives 24 bits of
I/O.  What it goes in, I have no idea, but I'd hazard a piece of test
equipment, since GPIB is most commonly found there (note the word "commonly"
for the pedants).

	--John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked]
> [mailto:[email-masked]]On
> Behalf Of Patrick Rigney
> Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 21:31
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Do you recognize these boards?
>
>

---

From: "Dr. Ido" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 3 00:49:00 2003

>Warning: LARGE graphics... best avoided if you are on a slow connection.

The top 2 boards with the 100 pin edges connectors look like they are from
and NEC PABX... The size, edge connectors, and layout/screen printing look
like boards I've removed from NEC PABXs in the past.  Assuming the 2nd
board is an SMD HDD controller as others have mentioned perhaps it was a
PABX with voicemail?

---

From: Tothwolf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 3 09:13:00 2003

> http://www.rigneyfamily.com/patrick/

The top two boards remind of somewhat of Multibus boards in early SGI
systems, though those two boards are clearly not Multibus. I'd imagine the
larger header connector on the processor board is the memory bus, which is
similar to what you see in older SGI and VAX systems. (Can anyone verify
if the 6821/6822 are some sort of bus interface chips?) My best guess
would be that they are from some sort of 68k workstation or system, but I
have no idea which. The date codes of the chips/boards might help you
narrow it down some.

The bottom board reminds me of boards I've seen from Tek and HP rack-mount
test gear. It looks like the EPROM and DRAM have been 'borrowed' from the
board though.

-Toth

---

From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 3 09:43:00 2003

--- Tothwolf <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > Does anyone recognize these three boards?
> >
> I'd imagine the larger header connector on the processor board is the
> memory bus...

Probably not with all those traces going to the 6821 chips.

> ...which is similar to what you see in older SGI and VAX systems. 

That much is true.  DEC (don't know about SGI) went to "PMI" - Private
Memory Interconnect - to get around problems with address bus width
and memory speeds with processors above the MicroVAX-I (the Qbus is
limited to 22 address bits and about 3MB/sec transfer rate).

> (Can anyone verify if the 6821/6822 are some sort of bus interface
> chips?)

They are not.  The 6821 is a common "Parallel Interface Adapter".  It
has two 8-bit parallel ports, several handshaking lines and a couple
of internal timers.  It is functionally equivalent to the MOS 6520,
and is somewhat ancestral to chips like the 6522 and 6526.  They are
commonly used in 1970s and 1980s gear to strobe keyboard matrices,
to drive external parallel devices, and to control LED and LCD
displays (there's a 6520 on the display board on a Rockwell AIM-65,
for example - I've put a 6821 in mine for testing).

-ethan

---

From: Tothwolf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 3 23:47:00 2003

On Thu, 3 Apr 2003, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> Memory Interconnect - to get around problems with address bus width and
> memory speeds with processors above the MicroVAX-I (the Qbus is limited
> to 22 address bits and about 3MB/sec transfer rate).

The older SGI systems that used a Multibus backplane had a similar PMI
like connection between the processor board and memory boards. Later
systems with a (custom) VME backplane also used interconnects, but they
were made with small pc boards and connectors instead of ribbon cable. If
memory serves, the memory boards didn't need those interconnect boards,
but many other board sets did, such as the video/display boards. I do have
several standard VME boards installed onto adapter frames that are plugged
into some of my (currently inaccessible) SGI systems.

> has two 8-bit parallel ports, several handshaking lines and a couple of
> internal timers.  It is functionally equivalent to the MOS 6520, and is
> somewhat ancestral to chips like the 6522 and 6526.  They are commonly
> used in 1970s and 1980s gear to strobe keyboard matrices, to drive
> external parallel devices, and to control LED and LCD displays (there's
> a 6520 on the display board on a Rockwell AIM-65, for example - I've put
> a 6821 in mine for testing).

I have to wonder then, if that connector might not be some kind of
bulkhead connector. Later SGI systems (1990-1994) use a 68 pin header for
the bulkhead, which contains a number of serial ports and also connects to
another board that has a 7 segment diagnostic display, etc.

-Toth