VOGONS


First post, by hpxca

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uc?export=download&id=1G84aRCFjq_q9hRgLLQSfqcpMiJhMqQlZ

It looks like the above image (this is the same card, but the image is borrowed from the one in York Universities collection). I have a working example of one of these, it appears to be a single-board computer used as an ISA I/O card made in the 1980's by Multibest Industries in Toronto. On mine both the IDE controller and FDD controllers work, as well as both serial ports. I have not been able to test the parallel port.

COM2 initially wasn't working, but I traced the IRQ3 and IRQ4 lines to the correct jumpers and found that IRQ3 was not connected, which explained why COM2 would detect the serial mouse, but the mouse just wouldn't work (no interrupts were making it to the CPU). I'm hoping someone might have documentation laying about somewhere in case I have any more problems with it.

This is what I figured out so far:

It's hard to see from the photos but there are two rows of jumpers labelled A,B,C,D,E,F. One set below the oscillator between the two socketed chips and another set below the IDE and FDD connectors. The set below the oscillator seems to control COM1, COM2 and LPT1 and I am guessing the set below the drive connectors configures those.

Of the ones below the oscillator I suspect A and B control the parallel port, C is the COM2 IRQ (top pin is 3 bottom pin is 4, center is common), D is probably the COM2 address or enable/disable, E is COM1 IRQ (top pin is 4, bottom pin is 3, center is common) and F is probably the same as D but for COM1.

If you know anything more about this card please let me know. Thanks!

Last edited by hpxca on 2024-01-10, 23:13. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 2, by Horun

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Looked around and could not find anything. Can you post a picture of your card ? Both front and back please.

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. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 2, by hpxca

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Here's the photos of mine, much better then the image I posted originally. It's not entirely what I thought after I looked up the chips. The WDC WD37C65CJM is just your average floppy controller and the Ti TL16C452FN is a dual UART + Centronix Parallel port chip.

multibest1.JPG
multibest2.JPG