NTG2001 wrote on 2024-05-22, 04:44:

I've had this 16-bit ISA card in one of my boxes for a few years now. It has a 37 pin female D-Sub connector and two Epic branded chips. Never seen something like this, appears to be made by Addonics (board says Quickpath Systems Inc and that's also what the FCC has on file, but the sticker on the back says Addonics). Considering they make storage related stuff, I assume this is likely some sort of proprietary controller card. I've tried searching the model number and FCC ID, but that hasn't netted me much. Any idea what this would've gone with?

IMG_5151.jpg
IMG_5152.jpg

Could it be for an external tape backup system, I know Addonics too and a tape storage setup seems like something they may have been into back in the day.

The EPIC chips are 16C552 chips, which are dual 16C550 chips. Those are serial UARTs. This card is a 4-port serial card. Two serial ports are on the 37-pin connector, and the other two on the two 26-pin pin headers. For the 37-pin connector, you need a break-out cable that converts it into 2*25-pin - I hope you find it somewhere near the place where you found the card. Otherwise, you can obviously reverse engineer the pinout and build your own cable, but that's tedious.

mkarcher wrote on 2024-05-22, 05:09:

The EPIC chips are 16C552 chips, which are dual 16C550 chips. Those are serial UARTs. This card is a 4-port serial card. Two serial ports are on the 37-pin connector, and the other two on the two 26-pin pin headers. For the 37-pin connector, you need a break-out cable that converts it into 2*25-pin - I hope you find it somewhere near the place where you found the card. Otherwise, you can obviously reverse engineer the pinout and build your own cable, but that's tedious.

out of curiosity would such a card have been used for external storage ?

More like some process control things.

I used something like this to connect external modems. The company I worked for back then used them for dial-in access, similarly to a modern-day VPN.

https://web.archive.org/web/19990210084808/ht … ct/flexport.htm

And

https://web.archive.org/web/19991022010109/ht … 0/html/fp42.htm

According to that product page, this thing has 4 serial ports and 2 parallel ones. No drivers required.

For config info and jumper settings :
https://web.archive.org/web/19991111083559/ht … _worksheet.html

And

https://web.archive.org/web/19981203125647/ht … th.com/fp42.txt

I could not find breakout cable pinout info, but that can probably be deduced by tracing pins and/or with an oscilloscope.

darry wrote on 2024-05-22, 06:28:

According to that product page, this thing has 4 serial ports and 2 parallel ones. No drivers required.

Thanks for the extra research. I somehow missed the fact that the 16c552 also includes a parallel port. This changes my claim about the connections: The two internal connectors are likely the two parallel ports, and all four(!) serial ports are connected using the 37-pin connector on the slot bracket.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-05-22, 05:17:

out of curiosity would such a card have been used for external storage ?

That's quite unlikely. The data rate of a single serial port is 11kB/s in the best case, which is too low for storage applications. While all four serial ports in parallel yield up to 45kB/s, using four separate UARTs to connect to a single target is not how you would design a higher-bandwidth interface at that time (but now we have PCI Express with multiple lanes...). The only ports that might be used for interfacing with storage are the parallel ports, but you wouldn't put four useless serial ports onto a card if the card is only meant to interface to some storage unit using a parallel port.

The main purpose of this card indeed seems to be to interface to multiple external devices. The suggestions in this thread that this card might be used for a multi-line BBS or interfacing multiple industrial control units or lab equipment to automate manufacturing or measuring processes sound reasonable.

mkarcher wrote on 2024-05-22, 05:09:

The EPIC chips are 16C552 chips, which are dual 16C550 chips. Those are serial UARTs. This card is a 4-port serial card. Two serial ports are on the 37-pin connector, and the other two on the two 26-pin pin headers. For the 37-pin connector, you need a break-out cable that converts it into 2*25-pin - I hope you find it somewhere near the place where you found the card. Otherwise, you can obviously reverse engineer the pinout and build your own cable, but that's tedious.

Unfortunately I do not have a cable for it. I think I got this in some lot years ago and it didn't come with any.

NTG2001 wrote on 2024-05-22, 16:22:

mkarcher wrote on 2024-05-22, 05:09:

The EPIC chips are 16C552 chips, which are dual 16C550 chips. Those are serial UARTs. This card is a 4-port serial card. Two serial ports are on the 37-pin connector, and the other two on the two 26-pin pin headers. For the 37-pin connector, you need a break-out cable that converts it into 2*25-pin - I hope you find it somewhere near the place where you found the card. Otherwise, you can obviously reverse engineer the pinout and build your own cable, but that's tedious.

Unfortunately I do not have a cable for it. I think I got this in some lot years ago and it didn't come with any.

I hope you noticed my correction. The break-out cable should be 37-pin to four times 25-pin or 9-pin, not just two of them, as I initially wrote. You know a PC-type serial port can do with 9 pins, so 4 ports need 4*9 = 36 pins, which perfectly fits the 37 pin connector. The Advantech OPT4A-AE cable will fit mechanically and is a 4-port breakout cable - but this does not necessarily mean this cable has the correct pin-out for your card.

mkarcher wrote on 2024-05-22, 17:00:

NTG2001 wrote on 2024-05-22, 16:22:

mkarcher wrote on 2024-05-22, 05:09:

The EPIC chips are 16C552 chips, which are dual 16C550 chips. Those are serial UARTs. This card is a 4-port serial card. Two serial ports are on the 37-pin connector, and the other two on the two 26-pin pin headers. For the 37-pin connector, you need a break-out cable that converts it into 2*25-pin - I hope you find it somewhere near the place where you found the card. Otherwise, you can obviously reverse engineer the pinout and build your own cable, but that's tedious.

Unfortunately I do not have a cable for it. I think I got this in some lot years ago and it didn't come with any.

I hope you noticed my correction. The break-out cable should be 37-pin to four times 25-pin or 9-pin, not just two of them, as I initially wrote. You know a PC-type serial port can do with 9 pins, so 4 ports need 4*9 = 36 pins, which perfectly fits the 37 pin connector. The Advantech OPT4A-AE cable will fit mechanically and is a 4-port breakout cable - but this does not necessarily mean this cable has the correct pin-out for your card.

Note that a 25-pin serial connector is seen as two COM ports, as a 25-pin serial is really just two discrete serial links.

EDIT: If you know the pinout of the ICs, you could probably make a cable. The D-Sub will likely be connected more or less directly to the ICs, maybe with level shifters or buffers.