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new hardware for WWG program/cards

Hello All
I am doing some troubleshooting to make sure none of the instrument boards have a short. The instrument consists of 6 boards: A DSP processor board with a AT&T DSP16A chip for each pair of channels plus the memory for the instrument, 4 acquisition cards with two channels each, and a another board used for control and signal generation. All 6 cards are long as the one in the picture. The original custom box also needed a slot for the LCD video card and a disk drive controller (8 total) The systems are used in a portable mode, so a seperate monitor is a chore. I am not sure what roll the 486 plays- it is not involved in data acquisition or computing, but is involved with the display. When looking at data that requires displaying a lot of data points on eight channels, the instrument never misses a beat but the display will be updated very slowly. Motherboard is 8.625 inches by 10. One of the systems, which works the best, has a Genoa 486-66 VLG TurboExpress, but it is a couple of years older than the board in the photo.
 

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Baby-AT

Baby-AT

Sounds like a standard Baby-AT.
So you're stuck with either 8 slots, or anything with 7-slots or more that has the HD & FDD controller built into the motherboard.
One more question, of the 6 instrument boards, the LCD controller, and the HD & FDD controller, how many are 8-bit boards & how many are 16-bit boards ? (The 16-bit boards have a longer edge connector & have a slit about 2/3 down.)
Not impossible to find. If you guys want, I'll pull some motherboards out & see if I have any that fit.
It sounds like all the 486 does is keep everything running, but all the heavy-duty analysis is done on the instrument cards, so a faster processor probably won't give you much advantage.
How much memory is in them, by the way ?
The flaky LCD panel/controller is probably replaceable, I'd have to take a look at it.
patscc
 
How does the LCD jack into the vid board? Is it an internal connection, or a standard 15-pin VGA that uses a little cable to jack in to the VGA board's external connector?

--T
 
LCD connects via an internal ribbon connector; Video card also has a standard D connector for an external monitor that works simultaneously. LCD is mono orange/black, external is color. At some point, color LCD was an expensive option. Tonight, I plan to switch boards out of burned motherboard into operating unit and test. None of the power connectors seem to be shorted. The A to D input boards are 8 bit; the DSP and controller board are 16 bit. DSP has 8 meg of ram, 16 500K chips which stand vertically in straight pin sockets. The reason for wanting more speed is the graphics and storage time. The instrument does it's own thing in terms of acquiring and number crunching. I think it is independant of the 486 because of the critical timing requirements. There may be some control functions by the 486 since the majority of the controls are via the windows program.
 
Lcd & dsp

Lcd & dsp

Is the LCD actually a LCD, or a plasma display ? The orange/black makes me wonder.
Is the DSP discrete, or an actual chip, like a TMS32020 or something ?
Do you have documentation for the systems ? It might be possible to add more memory or a co-processor to the boards, or something along those lines.

While you guys are at it, I'd take one of the known good hard drives, and ghost everything over onto a new one, or image it to a cd or something, so that you have a copy of an existing installation in case the drives do go belly up.
patscc
 
Repairs

Repairs

Patscc, you are correct about the screen- I think I remember it being a plasma. I think the early LCDs were too slow to show the fast moving signal traces. There are two chips for each board having two channels- A Xilinx XC3020-70 and a AT&T WE DSP16A. All the instrument boards in the burned mother board are good; I switched them into the 386 unit and they appear to work well. I am going to want the 486 board repaired. Anyone wanting to do some of this work, please send me a message including where you live. I am still investigating a post 486 solution, even a used one, but don't have any pricing yet. Thanks for everyone's input! JH
 
Post-486

Post-486

You're going to have a hard time finding a Pentium motherboard with 7 ISA slots.
However, another alternative would be to put in an Overdrive chip, or a upgrade processor of some sort. The Pentium-class motherboards would still use the same ISA bus to communicate with your boards, so using a Pentium board might not give you that much more(well, memory's faster) than than a upgrade chip.
patscc
 
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