Any idea what this Raster Output Board is?

[wrljet]

Found in an estate cleanout.

It has a DE-15 connector like a VGA, but with male pins. The main chip is an FPGA (sorry for poor picture).

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I take it you can't plug it into a retro system and see what it identifies as?

 

[Chuck(G)]

I think the problem might be that it's incomplete. U1 appears to have been removed. I strongly suspect that it's part of a multi-board setup. The only mentions on the web that I can find reference this exact board.

 

[cjs]

U1 appears to have been removed.

I'm not totally sure about that; there's currently one on Ebay (with a different serial number) that is also missing that chip, and it wouldn't be the first board that had pads for a chip that's not installed.

Though just as well it could be some particularly valuable chip that often gets removed from these boards by scavengers, I suppose. And it is weird to me that it still has the caps around the pad, though perhaps it's just cheaper always to install those than to sometimes not.

 

[Chuck(G)]

It's a mystery. As to what the board does, I could hazard a guess if the part numbers of the smaller chips were known (not easily visible on the photos) U2 is a clock driver and U4 looks to be a crystal/XCO for it. U5 appears to be a differential line receiver, U5 and U7 are illegible from where I sit. Could this be a gizmo that switches a signal between several displays, but keeps the H and V raster drivers for all displays synced? Just a wild stab in the dark, but it seems to fit, particularly in view of the DS1-DS8 LEDs. Alternatively, I suppose that it could be part of a video production setup, where several inputs could be selected, all sharing a common sync to avoid glitches when switching from one to the other. Not really my wheelhouse.

 

[cjs]

U6 is an Altera ACEX programmable logic device. U7 is some sort of TI part that I can't see well enough to identify, but maybe someone more familiar with TI stuff from the PCI era will recognise it. Here's the pic from the Ebay auction I mentioned above.