Christoffer
Experienced Member
Well not the entire system, unfortunately. The BM 7820 "Digital Processor Unit".
I was lucky enough to swap this piece of equipment for some vintage CPU's last week. I had no idea what it was (neither did the seller), but it was made in my home town, so I felt obliged to bring it home
Here's the front:
It's a digital control unit for a spectrophotometer, an old Zeiss analog one, where this small danish company, Brock & Michelsen, made a modernized digital interface box for it. (they got bought by Zeiss, btw).
A spectrophotometer, by the way, is used to measure UV/visible light through a liquid/gas/etc. can be used as an analytical technique in the chemistry-ish parts of the world.
Here's the back:
It has some analog in/out, remote in/out (think that's for controlling the light sources) The banana plug output might be for a pen plotter to record the spectrum.
Here's a photo of the analog board:
It holds some Analog Devices chips: AD7506 multiplexer, AD7522 10 bit DAC, and AD7255 13 bit ADC.
It also has a classic intel chipset 8253 programmable timer, likely to control the sampling.
Here's the processor board:
Almost as textbook as can be. All Intel chips: 8085A CPU, 2114 1K ram, spare room for another 1K, a bit of 74xx logic and 6x2kbyte 2716 Eproms.
The front panel PCB is pretty ordinary, didn't get a picture, sorry. Only interesting (non-logic chip) part on that is the intel 8279 display/keypad driver.
I think this smells a lot like having been developed on an intel 8085 dev board, since they went for the complete family.
Interestingly, the CPU card has a edge connector, but there'd never be room in the case for a connector to fit over it.. Board testing?
The machine does boot, but gives an "ERROR 01" on the display, and refuses input. I'd guess it has something to do with it not having anything hooked up to it, but I don't know. CPU seems good.
It needs another box same size that houses the amplifier front-end, which I don't have, and seeing how little info I can find on this, don't think I'll come across that one.. Or the spectroscope parts for that matter.. My plan is either to use it as a ordinary microcomputer system, pop some new code in it and mess around, or see if I can make a cheap-but-functioning spectroscope to use it with.
I think this has the capabilities of running serial comms to a terminal. If one notices the EPROM labeled "TTY0" - that sounds pretty serial. There's room for a third board in the machine, with a loose IDC connector to fit it. Also a "interface" blank panel on the back.
Unless they went completely against the trend, it's probably safe to bet that the UART on the missing (addon, I'd guess) board is also an Intel part. 8250 or 8251. Maybe a replacement board could be made, if you could figure out the addressing.
Funnily enough, the EPROM lacking intact label is completely blank. 00's all the way through. Don't think that's a failure, but I dunno.
What do you think? any good ideas on what to use this for?
I was lucky enough to swap this piece of equipment for some vintage CPU's last week. I had no idea what it was (neither did the seller), but it was made in my home town, so I felt obliged to bring it home
Here's the front:
It's a digital control unit for a spectrophotometer, an old Zeiss analog one, where this small danish company, Brock & Michelsen, made a modernized digital interface box for it. (they got bought by Zeiss, btw).
A spectrophotometer, by the way, is used to measure UV/visible light through a liquid/gas/etc. can be used as an analytical technique in the chemistry-ish parts of the world.
Here's the back:
It has some analog in/out, remote in/out (think that's for controlling the light sources) The banana plug output might be for a pen plotter to record the spectrum.
Here's a photo of the analog board:
It holds some Analog Devices chips: AD7506 multiplexer, AD7522 10 bit DAC, and AD7255 13 bit ADC.
It also has a classic intel chipset 8253 programmable timer, likely to control the sampling.
Here's the processor board:
Almost as textbook as can be. All Intel chips: 8085A CPU, 2114 1K ram, spare room for another 1K, a bit of 74xx logic and 6x2kbyte 2716 Eproms.
The front panel PCB is pretty ordinary, didn't get a picture, sorry. Only interesting (non-logic chip) part on that is the intel 8279 display/keypad driver.
I think this smells a lot like having been developed on an intel 8085 dev board, since they went for the complete family.
Interestingly, the CPU card has a edge connector, but there'd never be room in the case for a connector to fit over it.. Board testing?
The machine does boot, but gives an "ERROR 01" on the display, and refuses input. I'd guess it has something to do with it not having anything hooked up to it, but I don't know. CPU seems good.
It needs another box same size that houses the amplifier front-end, which I don't have, and seeing how little info I can find on this, don't think I'll come across that one.. Or the spectroscope parts for that matter.. My plan is either to use it as a ordinary microcomputer system, pop some new code in it and mess around, or see if I can make a cheap-but-functioning spectroscope to use it with.
I think this has the capabilities of running serial comms to a terminal. If one notices the EPROM labeled "TTY0" - that sounds pretty serial. There's room for a third board in the machine, with a loose IDC connector to fit it. Also a "interface" blank panel on the back.
Unless they went completely against the trend, it's probably safe to bet that the UART on the missing (addon, I'd guess) board is also an Intel part. 8250 or 8251. Maybe a replacement board could be made, if you could figure out the addressing.
Funnily enough, the EPROM lacking intact label is completely blank. 00's all the way through. Don't think that's a failure, but I dunno.
What do you think? any good ideas on what to use this for?
