deathshadow
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2011
- Messages
- 1,378
I grabbed a PC clone off e-fence since I wanted a spare XT era case and PSU, and getting one with a 640k XT clone mobo populated with cards was just a bonus... but the "floppy controller" in this thing is quite... unusual... Most of the board seems to have jack *** to do with being a floppy controller. It's got a 6502, 6522, I THINK it has 16k of RAM -- don't quote me on that, I get confused when they say 16384 words of 1 bit per chip -- a potentiometer or rotary switch on the back, two empty ROM sockets... the stuff I'd expect to be on a floppy controller is on a daughterboard (R6765P) plugged into the back of it!
Sorry for the blurry pics, no tripod and parkinsons so...
Whole card front
http://www.deathshadow.com/images/oddCard/odd1.jpg
Close-up of the fancy parts:First clear pic I've taken in four years!
http://www.deathshadow.com/images/oddCard/odd2.jpg
... and the daughterboard on the back:
http://www.deathshadow.com/images/oddCard/odd3_daughterboard.jpg
ROM label level adjusted to be legible:
http://www.deathshadow.com/images/oddCard/romLabel.jpg
I've not actually booted the system yet as the shipping was haphazard, which mixed with the age left me with a bunch of 41256's floating around loose in the case having popped out of their sockets
Be interesting to see what it does, but what is this thing? Some form of tape controller? Disk compression? Apple II emulation card?
I know Faraday Electronics (which can be made out on the rom) used to make a lot of oddball PC parts, from half-length cards with entire PC clones on them, to combo cards that put things like the AST sixPack to shame... but I've never heard of "Companion Technologies" or seen anything quite like this before. The presence of a 6502 and a good chunk of RAM is interesting...
Sorry for the blurry pics, no tripod and parkinsons so...
Whole card front
http://www.deathshadow.com/images/oddCard/odd1.jpg
Close-up of the fancy parts:First clear pic I've taken in four years!
http://www.deathshadow.com/images/oddCard/odd2.jpg
... and the daughterboard on the back:
http://www.deathshadow.com/images/oddCard/odd3_daughterboard.jpg
ROM label level adjusted to be legible:
http://www.deathshadow.com/images/oddCard/romLabel.jpg
I've not actually booted the system yet as the shipping was haphazard, which mixed with the age left me with a bunch of 41256's floating around loose in the case having popped out of their sockets
Be interesting to see what it does, but what is this thing? Some form of tape controller? Disk compression? Apple II emulation card?
I know Faraday Electronics (which can be made out on the rom) used to make a lot of oddball PC parts, from half-length cards with entire PC clones on them, to combo cards that put things like the AST sixPack to shame... but I've never heard of "Companion Technologies" or seen anything quite like this before. The presence of a 6502 and a good chunk of RAM is interesting...