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Large DEB17 Computer PCB made in Canada, what on earth is it?

I was looking at the complex of 4 sockets, especially the two large square ones that are very similar, and thinking that this is the basis of a dual processor workstation of some kind. A pair of cables to a memory board maybe? I wish I knew more about Canadian systems.
 
twolazy said:
Looks like a SCSI backplane, for what I have no clue.
Click to expand...

I’m not sure where you get “SCSI backplane” from this. It has several AMD 29xxx bitslice CPU components which may or may not comprise a complete Turing-complete CPU; it could be that or it could be some kind of DSP; that it has a 29540 kind of leans towards the latter? There is also a ton of small fast SRAM, and I suspect a lot of the chips with labels on them are programmed PAL/GALs.

I‘m thinking something industrial. Process analysis equipment, maybe a robot…

Edit: AMD manual for the 29540, likewise strongly hinting this is something specialized for high speed data acquisition and processing:


One edge of the board has *18* high speed 2kx8 35ns RAM chips on it, and each one is next to a dedicated ‘245 buffer, which is… very weird for anything like a normal computer. This looks like it’s designed to do multiple streams in parallel…
 
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AM29000 designer's family details:

Description: RISC processors and microcontrollers family. Used in SCSI cards, and printers

Also, look at the 2 50 pin connectors on the bottom of the board... Why I was thinking perhaps it was some sort of caching controller. Definitely industrial.
 
twolazy said:
AM29000 designer's family details:

Description: RISC processors and microcontrollers family. Used in SCSI cards, and printers
Click to expand...

Yeah, I certainly don't blame you for being confused by AMD's naming conventions. Apparently someone at AMD was really in love with "29" because they named a bazillion things starting with that prefix. This thing doesn't have an AM29000 RISC CPU on it, it's got a 29116, which is a weird 16 bit thing that's kind of like a cross between a bit-slice processor component (like the earlier 29xx family, which this board also has one of on it) and a full CPU.

Poking through that manual I linked to above I think whatever this board does it's based heavily on the DSP designs that are described in that book. That 29540 part is a specialized address generator for doing Fast Fourier Transforms, and on page 25 of the PDF it describes it operating in concert with the 29116 for coordinating DSP algorithms. There's apparently also a Weitek FPU on that board (that square thing in the carrier under the empty sockets), I would hazard a guess that this thing is designed to pipeline data through that thing?

I wouldn't rule out some kind of real-time video processing application, maybe? The thing is that despite having a *ton* of RAM chips on it they're all pretty tiny, not enough for any kind of framebuffer so... yeah. Mysterious.
 
… playing “where’s Waldo” with the board some more I see a block of eight AM2922 eight input multiplexers with control registers. The datasheet for that part describes it as useful for computer control units and other state machines…

If this thing sells for $80 someone will get some interesting parts, at least.
 
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