VOGONS


First post, by Ozzuneoj

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... and is it more useful than all of those juicy 1Mbit DRAM chips it has?

Seriously, this thing has 36 DRAM chips (18 100ns chips and 18 70ns chips), which are extremely useful for old video cards and other devices from the early 90s... but I can't bring myself to part it out without know for sure that it is never going to be useful to anyone. Generally, any kind of cards designed for some specific data processing task have zero likelihood of ever being used again. If this is such a card, I would love to make use of the components on it to repair other devices I have that could use them.

But if this is a device that is still possibly useful, I wouldn't want to harvest parts from it.

What do you guys think?

It appears to be made by XIONICS INTERNATIONAL LTD 1990. The model is XIP-B (ISA) 3274 G1V1

There's a DIP switch under the top edge of the daughterboard too. The best lead I have is that its may be some kind of "image processor", as Xionics apparently made image processing chips that were used in copiers and other devices. Beyond that, I have no idea. I'm going to attempt to take the daughterboard off but it looked like it was going to be a pain so I didn't tear into it to badly before.

Last edited by Ozzuneoj on 2018-08-14, 03:21. Edited 2 times in total.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 1 of 7, by Ozzuneoj

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Okay, I took the daughterboard off (much easier than I thought) and I found a Hitachi chip and a ton of other misc stuff...

... HAH! I just searched for things a bit differently and found this:

http://greyghost.mooo.com/mcastuff/xionics/

Someone else trying to figure out what on earth it is for. Theirs is a little different than mine though (XIP-D vs XIP-B).

Still don't know if this would be useful anymore though.

What do you guys think?

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 3 of 7, by cyclone3d

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From looking up the company, it sounds like it probably came out of some document imaging machine.

Here are a few links to check out:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/10145 … 5-96-004096.txt

http://community.aiim.org/blogs/anthony-macci … my-capture-blog

https://books.google.com/books?id=OToEAAAAMBA … ational&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=YlAEAAAAMBA … ational&f=false

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 4 of 7, by Ozzuneoj

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Thanks guys, the links help.

I'm not really familiar with what "imaging" entailed in the late '80s and early '90s, so I'm still having trouble understanding exactly what the card was used for. It is an ISA card, so I would assume that it was some kind of x86 system that was attached to a document scanner via this card, the card processed the data sent by the scanner and created image files that could be saved or reprinted?

The interfaces don't look standard, so I would assume that the card is useless without the original (and super outdated) scanning device.

I just want to be 100% sure before I harvest from it. There are (or were) millions of proprietary industrial and business components that have no use but to get melted down and recycled, but its not often that they contain a full 4MB (plus parity) worth of dip-18 DRAM chips. That was quite a bit of memory to have on an add on card back then... this thing must have been insanely expensive.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 6 of 7, by Ozzuneoj

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Rawit wrote:

Xionics XIP II and other Xionics cards are mentioned here:

https://www.alarisworld.com/~/media/files/di/ … folio-eamer.pdf

Thanks!

It's looking like an obsolete interface for an obsolete scanner. I think I could probably harvest the memory and make use of it without worrying about destroying something useful.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 7 of 7, by Ozzuneoj

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Just going to bump this thread one last time before I put this card in a newly designated "To Harvest Parts From" box. I have a couple old video cards that would love to have 1MB or 2MB of RAM...

Unless someone can give me a good reason to preserve this card.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.