VOGONS


First post, by etomcat

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Hello,
Since this thread mentiones Unisys, I wish to ask what job this mysterious ISA-8 card may have been doing? It has UNISYS and SPERRY brand chips on it and the top edge connector for flat ribbon cables is actually doubled, so it may have been part of 3-card assembly?
Thanks in advance, Tamas Feher, Hungary.

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Reply 1 of 15, by Horun

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Need a better picture of the chips. Appears to have ram chips on left with a header pin out (for possible more ram) and Zilog micro proc on right, possibly for HD controller thru the white connector....
just guessing as cannot read the chip labels to see what they are...

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 15, by vetz

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Posts split to new topic.

Etomcat: Welcome to the forums, remember that VOGONS is no marketplace!. You cannot sell your items here! I've edited and removed some of yours posts because of this.

Also please try to stay on topic when posting in threads. In this case it would have been better with starting a new thread .

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Reply 3 of 15, by etomcat

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Horun wrote on 2021-03-13, 15:40:

Need a better picture of the chips. ... as cannot read the chip labels to see what they are...

Hello and thanks for the patience!
I've just made some photos with a proper digicam, hopefully these will prove helpful. Thanks in advance!

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Reply 4 of 15, by evasive

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisys

Burroughs buying Sperry for $4.8 billion

So that bit explained.

Other than that, this looks like an experiment board with all the traces/wiring missing. This looks like an engineering sample at the very least, not a production-ready card. You'll need tons of luck finding any info on it.

Reply 5 of 15, by weedeewee

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22Mbit of RAM
48KB of SRAM
another 12KB of SRAM
another 8KB of SRAM
a Z80
Definitely some controller... 😒

evasive, the traces are there, just can't be seen. This is no experiment board.

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Reply 6 of 15, by kdr

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The board does not appear to have any ROM, so the drivers would need to upload some firmware into the card to make it functional.

Could it be something similar to a 5250 emulation card? The IBM 5250 cards also have an onboard CPU/memory and use a 15-pin D sub connector with an adapter to interface to the twinax cable.

Reply 7 of 15, by weedeewee

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kdr wrote on 2021-03-22, 21:20:

The board does not appear to have any ROM, so the drivers would need to upload some firmware into the card to make it functional.

Could it be something similar to a 5250 emulation card? The IBM 5250 cards also have an onboard CPU/memory and use a 15-pin D sub connector with an adapter to interface to the twinax cable.

I dunno... four out of five chips that have a sticker on them, kinda look like eproms to me, not regular size though. the fifth one has a more gal/pal look to it 😀

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Reply 9 of 15, by Horun

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etomcat wrote on 2021-03-22, 13:38:

Hello and thanks for the patience!
I've just made some photos with a proper digicam, hopefully these will prove helpful. Thanks in advance!

Can you post a better picture of the back of the board near the output connector ? There are part numbers near that 15 pin connector.

Yeah lots ram chips. Twenty-two HM511000Ap-10, 1M x 1 FPM ram chips. 1Mbit chips very expensive in 1989 ! Being two rows of 9 that would make a 2MB plus four spare (possibly for the addon card with the two in-lines holes on the back plus third near header and those three holes would secure to it thru stand offs. (similar to IBM 61X6720 with the 61X6667 add-on EMS 16bit AT card but this is for 8bit). I have a HP laser printer add-on from early 90's that has 3.5Mb ram on it in an odd chip layout. Not 2 or 4 but 3.5Mb because it added to the internal ram. So my guess is that the add-on mem card would make a total of 4Mb EMS on this card with those spare rams chips which could be powered but not accessed until addon was attached..... just spinning ideas around ;p

The five HM6788P-35 are 16K X 4 sram and not sure why there.
The six HM6268P-25 are 4k X 4 sram and probably work with the gold topped Sperry chip.
The huge HM6264AP-10 is a 8k x 8-bit sram and as kdr says probably stores a BIOS file thru a driver or is for the Zilog micro proc.
The top set jumpers have RS232 and the Zilog Z0844104PSC IC is a Serial Input/output Controller.
The Zilog Z80 speaks for it self. Have one on a Vtech old super I/O card from an XT.

Ok my best guess is that it is a specialized Super I/O card with EMS ram.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 11 of 15, by mkarcher

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keenerb wrote on 2021-03-23, 00:26:

Jumper blocks labeled IRQ, STP, 2, 3, ADR STOP, A C D E, X21, 282 (partially obscured)

For my, the "IRQ STP" block is obvious. The four courners are labelled 2,3,4,7, which are the four possible IRQ levels the card can be jumpered to. The two central pins are most likely in parallel, and contain the IRQ output signal. You need a jumper to choose which ISA IRQ pin is connected to that output signal.

The "ADR STP" (i guess STP mean "setup") is kind of similar, but not that obvious. Most likely, the central pins (without labelling) are shorted together to the "master chip select". The labelled pins are connected to outputs of an address decoder. As the labels "8,9,A,C,D,E" look like hex digits, this is probably the middle digit of the I/O port the card responds to. The first digit (in classic PC cards) needs to be 2 or 3, so the choices are 280-28F, 290-29F, 2A0-2AF, 2C0-2CF, 2D0-2DF or 2E0-2EF. As 3D0-3DF is occupied by the CGA card, I guess the interpretation with a 2 in the front is much more likely than 380-38F, 390-39F, 3A0-3AF, 3C0-3CF, 3D0-3DF, 3E0-3EF, but both are definitely possible.

The jumpers in the corner should be X21 and 232, to choose the serial port type: X.21 or RS232. X.21 uses a 15-pin connector, just as the socket on the board. In some regions, X.21 was used for circuit-switched data telecommunication at higher speed than telephone modems could (or were allowed to) do. This fits the guess that this board might be intended for intelligent terminal emulation purposes.

I don't think the port at the edge is SCSI: The (up to 32) lines are driven by three octal line drivers 74ALS756, which are open-collector drivers. The "white bars" next to them are the resistors that provide the necessary pull-up. SCSI on the other and is terminated to a "center voltage", and driven using push-pull drivers. The fourth 74ALS756 does not have pull-ups in vincinity, so it seems to not be driving another 8 pins on the port, but it might be used as receiver chips for 8-bit data with pull-ups provided by one of the ASICs.

Reply 12 of 15, by etomcat

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Hello,

Thank you all for yours suggestions! Mkarcher's pointing out the importance of X.21 jumpers was super helpful! Now I wonder if this board may have been part of a minicomputer or mainframe releated 2-3 expansion card battery, similar to IBM's PC/3270 or XT/AT-370?

I mean Unisys (ex Burroughs-Sperry) also had their own mainframe product line, just like IBM and probably needed a way to let those mammuts communicate with the emerging fleets of PC-compatibles (or even run single-user mainframe code on expanion cards for economical software development). The Wiki article says X.21 could transfer up to 1MB/sec, so maybe the relatively large amount of RAM onboard was needed for buffering? Considering that competitors like Unisys and Fujitsu went away and even IBM's zSeries is now kind of a fossil, I'm afraid little info survived of obscure mainframe-related PC-side equipment or at least they never found a way to the web?

Anyhow I found these markings on the Unisys card:
Writing in tin letters: 7417_0011_000, 7418_0013_01, in black ink: D38, 8935 (datecode for 1989 week 35?), Unisys, D5RV-1 (or D5RV-I?), S/N 77358-04 189, Q0029789 (barcode) and chips marked by paper tape: 74012477-01/03/05, 74012469-00, 74022781-00

Yours Sincerely: Tamas Feher, Hungary.

Reply 14 of 15, by etomcat

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Hello,

> Could that be an AUI connector, the 15-pin one?

I don't think so. On most ethernet cards featuring the DB-15 connector, there is a tiny glass "lightbulb" installed nearby. (I think that's a kind of lightning / overvoltage protector?) Furthermore, the presence of Zilog Z80 on board suggests some kind of slower comms as I don't think that 8-bit architecture could keep up with 10mbps ethernet pace? The Unisys card's jumper even explicity mentions selectable RS-232 / X.21 protocol, which are serial links. (BTW, I have a MUPID for PC card pair, where Z80 CPU is used to drive interactive video-text over dial-in line connection, probably at 2400 or 9600 baud.)

Best regards: Tamas Feher.

Reply 15 of 15, by Tiido

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That Z80 is not a CPU but SIO, an UART chip.

I imagine it is some data aquisition and processing card and not useful without its companion hardware and software.

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